


Home Again

by hulksmashmouth



Series: Have Patience with Your Local Teens, They're Going Through a Lot [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Avengers - Freeform, Coney Island, F/M, Family Reunions, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Snapchat, Teen Angst, hormonal confusion, my first spideychelle, ned is barely here but i love him too, steve only shows up for a second but he's an idiot and i love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 19:05:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13530675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulksmashmouth/pseuds/hulksmashmouth
Summary: Or, "Being a Teenager is Really Hard and Confusing" or, "Please Be Gentle On Your Local Fifteen-Year-Olds"MJ is going through a hard time as sophomore year comes to an end. Peter tries to be there for her. They both wrestle with their feelings far longer than is totally necessary.





	1. Chapter 1

After putting away the Vulture, Peter does good on his promise to just focus on being a kid for a while, with some friendly neighborhood Spider-Manning on the side. Even though the idea of being an Avenger someday still totally makes his heart go pitter-patter he knows better now. Experience is totally key to being a good global superhero. Once he gets some more experience, he can think again. And without those all-consuming thoughts taking up storage space in his head, he can start to think about stuff like homework and Legos and driving lessons. College, someday. New friends.

And improving relationships with old friends. After Liz left Midtown and Michelle became decathlon captain (thus becoming _MJ_ , though it’s still hard to remember to call her that), Peter and Ned notice that she’s acting...not _different_ , but the same in slightly closer proximity to them. Instead of reading alone at the opposite end of the lunch table she reads alone two seats away from Peter, and was Ned’s partner in chemistry for a month-long experiment involving mold cultures that they dubbed their _spore baby_. Many co-parenting jokes were made. It was awesome. And it keeps happening, little things that lead Peter and Ned to believe that maybe not all hope is lost if Michelle—MJ—is capable of calling them _losers_ with a hint of affection in her voice instead of scorn. 

Every time Peter’s out of school with a “bad cold” (some kind of injury that takes longer than a few hours for his super-healing to handle) he comes back to a locker stuffed to overflowing with single-serve potato chip bags and gummy worms and a tidier stack of his homework assignments at the bottom. When some senior gets jealous that Ned's science fair project made first place over his and give his computer a bad virus, MJ stayed up all weekend with them combing over codes and calling anti-virus software developers to help fix it, and then puts ghost pepper juice in all of the senior's jock straps, because of _course_ he's on one of Midtown's underperforming sports teams and has a lot of compensating to do when even sophomores can outsmart him.

Michelle is actually a really good friend, once you know she’s your friend in the first place.

As the end of sophomore year creeps closer, the frigid chill of New York spring mornings giving way to exhaust-tinged afternoons and dewy nights, decathlon practice gets more loosely policed. MJ’s strict phone ban is loosened and the first 15 minutes of practice are usually devoted to who can find the funniest Reddit videos. The infectious attitude of school ending makes everyone giddy-headed and a little silly; even MJ smiles more without any mean words for counterbalance. And Flash Thompson miraculously managed to stop being such a dick a few months ago, once Peter stopped skipping team practices and committed. It’s a weird kind of thing to realize, that the people he thought hated him for no reason actually hated him because he spent a year blowing them off. Really, really weird.

Another thing changes, too. Aunt May blames raging teen hormones and is probably right, but he starts to notice things about MJ. Little things at first, that she usually wears her hair up on days she works after school, or the eyedrops she uses for springtime allergies. Then it’s other, kind of creepier stuff. Depending on type and book size she can read ten pages in under four minutes, and her favorite color for highlighting passages is green but her favorite color for memorizing details and equations is pink. He starts to notice the things that make her smile and tries to do them more and more often. He notices when she's gone, and wishes she was there.

But it’s fine. He doesn’t expect her to like him back. Actually, she’ll probably think he’s just rebounding off of Liz onto her, even though he’s pretty sure what he feels now is totally different than the baseline awe and admiration he felt for Liz. Still, he doesn’t want to mess up what they have going now, so…he’ll just let it pass.

So on the last Friday night before school ends there’s a party, to celebrate the end of final exams. Academic decathlon team and plus-ones only. Peter’s wondering if he’s even going to show up since he wants to squeeze in a patrol and the party’s at Flash’s house when suddenly MJ materializes next to his locker like a phantom or a vape cloud that smells pleasantly of her jasmine shampoo.

“So, are you going to hang out with me at the party tonight?” she asks point-blank, staring directly into his face with such an amount of force that he thinks she has to be covering something else up. Her jaw is clenched and her knuckles are pale where she’s clutching _This Bridge Called My Back_. But she doesn’t tear her eyes away from his, expectant.

“Uh... _yeah_ ,” he says, feeling himself turning red when his voice cracks, “yeah, definitely. I’ll be there. Will...will you? Show up, I mean?”

Her thick, soft brows draw closer together, because of course she’s showing up since she just asked him to hang out with her, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to die of embarrassment. Then her features soften and she smiles. He almost dies again but for different reasons. “Not because I _want_ to. I have to, I’m the captain, but I expect a rich-person house like Flash’s probably has some wicked hiding spots for when everyone gets annoying. So we’ll find one and hang out until _you_ get annoying too. Then I’ll just go home. Later, loser.” Then she, like, playfully shoves him toward the locker bay with her shoulder and walks away, immediately swallowed up by the sea of classmates on their way to next period.

He runs home from school without stopping to talk to Ned, unsettled and unbalanced, wanting no one to know about this minor development except Aunt May. 

“Oh, sweetie,” Aunt May sighs when he tells her in a big, ugly rush that he _definitely_ knows he likes Michelle now, and she might like him back, and doesn’t know what to do because she’s basically the scariest most beautiful person he’s ever met in his entire life, and the last time he liked a girl her dad literally tried to murder him. She wraps long, warm arms around his shoulders, ruffles his hair, and says: “I have reason to believe she’s been in gooey teenager love with you since you two met, my precious dumb boy.”

“ _What?_!” He doesn’t even mind being called precious and dumb in the same sentence, he’s so shocked.

“Yeah, Pete, remember the decathlon meet at Bayview High School?” May asks. She squeezes his shoulders because she knows he won’t, and makes him follow her into the kitchen so she can keep systematically destroying the meatloaf she’s attempting. “I was watching! She’d only been on the team for, what, a week? Every time you both went for the button at the same time I thought she was going to attract passing aircraft, she turned to red! Sweet thing.”

Sweet? May thinks Michelle is _sweet?_ Peter remembers Michelle’s first month at school, if not that particular meet, unexpectedly showing up midway through the second week of freshman year with no explanations and no introductions, melting into the background except to tell Peter he was a loser. Singling him out... But she was so _mean!_ Even though Liz had easily and instantly folded her into the ac-dec team, and classmates tried to become her friends, she had remained virtually friendless and isolated until her big DC win a year later. She sat near Peter and Ned at lunch but never mentioned it. When someone tried to talk to her she was crass, rude, and so extremely sarcastic that Peter still can’t take anything she says without a huge grain of salt. Why would she be mean to him if she liked him? Why be so mean to _anyone_ in a new school?  

Because now he’s really panicking about whether or not MJ likes him after all, May spends two hours helping him pick out what to wear to the party (complete with mini fashion show) before they give up on the meatloaf and get Chinese for dinner instead. A dark blue t-shirt and his better jeans. A red hoodie, in case it gets cold later. The most boring outfit in the world.

“And if there’s _alcohol_ at this party?” asks May in a very leading way between bites of noodles.

“Drink just enough to look cool, but not enough to puke,” Peter retorts with a grin, and narrowly dodges a projectile carrot slice. “May! I’m kidding! It’s a bunch of ac-dec kids watching movies and getting sugar-high. Seriously, how much trouble do you think honor students are gonna get into?”

That just gets him another scathing look. “Work hard, play hard,” she says sagely, then beams at him. “Let’s get out of here, huh? You’re gonna miss spin the bottle!”

“May, don’t joke about that!”

He follows her laughter out of the restaurant, ears burning.

Flash’s house is terrifyingly huge and with an illogical number of windows. Peter always wondered why rich people have so many windows; is it a status thing, like chimneys were in the 19th century? The more windows means you have the extravagant funds to pay people to clean them all? Peter shakes the thoughts from his head as he climbs out of May’s car. The front door opens to emit a shaft of golden light across the darkened drive. Flash is holding a two-liter of Mountain Dew like it’s something a lot more potent (when Peter walks past he’ll realize it’s because the contents of the bottle are actually _honest to god whiskey_ ), and loud music is already blasting from what have to be really impressive speakers, because there’s no sound distortion at all. 

He turns back to wave goodbye to Aunt May, but she’s saved him the embarrassment of getting a ride and glided away into the night. He hears the engine cough a block away and feels comforted before going inside.

For a small intimate party only for the ac-dec team, it’s cool. It’s a _cool_ _party_ , and Peter is _supposed_ to be there. He’s never really regretted turning down Mister Stark’s offer to join the Avengers, but every time he goes to team practice or Ned’s or gets a second to breathe without being crushed by his own anxiety about underperforming for Avenger standards...he actually feels _good_ about the choice. He feels lighter, more like a kid.

He sees MJ in the kitchen; she’s just shoved what looks like approximately two hundred tortilla chips into her mouth at the same time and there’s queso on her chin and Peter knows at that moment that he really, really, _really_ likes her. 

Gooey.

Teenager.

Love.

She sees him coming and claps one hand over her mouth, flipping him off with the other. To hide that she’s blushing? Holy crap. Holy crap! Maybe spin the bottle wouldn’t be such a bad idea...just kidding, he would probably have a stroke and die if he has to kiss Michelle in front of everyone. Plus maybe she really doesn’t like him and he’s just reading into it because of Aunt May sticking her nose in.

“H-hey, MJ,” he says when he finally makes it to her and pretends not to notice the chips-and-queso-face situation. “Am I late?”

“Oh, no,” she says quickly, waving a napkin at him in a vague kind of way. “I came early to help set up, this place is on my subway route. Plus, I’m kind of, like, in charge, I guess? So I figured I should probably be here first.”

He nods, wondering if the action makes him look like a bobble head. Why? He’s nodded to or at her probably a million times before and never worried—but maybe now he’s _known_ for nodding and that’s why she thinks he looks like a bobble head and is always calling him a loser— _oh my god Peter shut up_. “That makes sense. You, uh...pretty.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. Peter loves her eyebrows: they’re so expressive even when the rest of her face is set into determined lines of apathy. “ _I pretty?_ ” she echoes. “Did you pregame or something before coming over? Don’t answer that or I’ll have to put you on team probation for unsportsmanlike conduct, by the way. I didn’t give Flash that warning...oops.” Her eyebrows wiggle and Peter laughs. He can’t help it. He’s a little bit obsessed with her and has been for a long time now. 

Which is why he suddenly thinks he knows why MJ came to the party early and basically set up camp at the food table. At time, he can be pretty observant, too, and he hasn’t seen her eating lunch—hot or brown-bag—all week. Or last week, and she cut practice short last week because she had to work a double shift at the bodega. There are puffy bags under her eyes, but he stands by what he said. MJ... _pretty_. She’s wearing her usual shades of black and gray, but there’s a headband holding back her wild curls the exact same warm nut-brown as her skin, which looks so so soft and a little shimmery in the low lights.

Yeah, he’s screwed.

He’s interrupted from this particular train of thought by Ned crashing headlong into him, as if it’s been five years since they’ve seen each other instead of _maybe_ five hours, _tops_. He staggers from the memory of Ned doing this pre-super strength, since he can actually probably bench-press three of Ned now, and gives him a feeble shove for good measure. “Dude!”

“Cindy signed into JackBox,” announces Ned without preamble. “MJ, you are going to be, like, _so good_ at Fibbage and Quiplash that I almost _don’t_ want you to play? But it would actually probably violate some law of the universe to deprive everyone of that experience. So, you gotta play.” 

He doesn’t take no for an answer, which is very _Ned_ of him, and less than a minute later Peter and MJ are sandwiched together on the couch amid the small throng of humanity that is the ac-dec crew. It’s hot and loud and weirdly really nice. He can feel the warmth of MJ's skin through her leggings.

When too many people want to play to accommodate the server Peter concedes his spot so Michelle can get in on her phone. She makes her username _GeorgeKush_ , and completely kills it, _obviously_. Peter gets caught up watching her, so serious and thoughtful as she comes up with fake answers to real questions in Fibbage and tricks everyone into voting for them. She maintains the stern look through Quiplash too, but there’s a definite dimpling in her cheek that means she’s trying not to grin to herself when she comes up with a response to the prompt that has the whole room shrieking with laughter.

They play each game a few times so everyone can have a turn, and everything is noise and laughing and mild tipsy confusion when Cindy changes her username to _Flashboi_. Then a text pops up on MJ’s screen and she gets up with a perfunctory, “Bored, bye,” and vanishes into the kitchen again. Before Peter can think to wonder if everything is okay, Flash yells a very loud, very bad word in shocked reaction to the hilariously wicked answer Abraham just came up with for _Something You Should Never Stuff a Bra With_. 

Before he knows it, an hour’s passed. Peter realizes Michelle never came back, tunes his hearing toward the kitchen but can’t make anything out over the noise caused by the gameplay. Claiming a bathroom break, he gets up and starts to snoop. Why not? It’s just Flash’s house, and it’s not like he’s going to steal anything. Just see where MJ is. She did mention wanting to find a hiding spot. And to hang out with him in it. That makes his guts turn into jelly, to be honest. What does she want to hang out with him for? He’s a loser, she says so herself pretty much all the time. There really must be a lot of places to hide here, though; he wanders up a staircase and pokes his head in doors that are already open, not rude enough to help himself to the privacy of closed doors until he knows MJ isn’t in the open ones.

On the opposite end of the house from the party and two floors up, he finds a kind of mini-staircase up to a trapdoor. Attic or roof, he asks himself, and decides why not find out? It’s something Michelle would do, and he’s somewhat inclined toward wanting to impress her, so he climbs. The air gets crisper as he goes up, the nights still coming on chilly enough to recommend a jacket, and he’s grateful for his hoodie.

Roof. Rooftop patio, oh _freaking sweet_.

At first all he sees is the furniture, probably worth more money than Aunt May pays for their apartment in a month, the string-up lights, the (thankfully disconnected) speakers placed discreetly along the safety railings. The lights are on, casting long shadows, and it takes a good minute before he sees Michelle.

Or rather, hears her. She’s sat on the edge of the roof beyond the safety rail, phone to her ear, angrily talking in a thick and shuddering voice, something something _huge mistake_ something _what about my_ something something _didn’t even think to ask me?_ Oh, no.

“Michelle?” he peeps before thinking about it first. She turns around too fast, startled, and almost loses her balance. For a terrifying second Peter thinks _this is it, this is how she finds out I’m Spider-Man, because I scared her off the roof, oh god, this is awful._ But she catches herself and stares at him hard, probably wondering how much he heard.

There aren’t tears on her face but the ends of her sleeves are wet, a darker shade of gray than the rest of her definitely-too-thin cardigan. “Mom, I have to go,” she says without looking away from Peter’s face, and she hangs up without waiting for a maternal goodbye. For a few moments neither of them says anything. Michelle works her jaw silently, anger and despair at war in her eyes. She’s shivering. That’s at least something he can latch onto.

“Here,” he says, quickly pulling off his more substantial hoodie as he walks toward her, since she shows no sign of moving his way first. “It’s cold up here, huh?”

She silently accepts the hoodie and wraps herself up inside of it, still watching him, so he decides to alleviate her worry before she has to ask. “I wasn’t trying to listen or anything. I just, uh. Hadn’t seen you in a while. Wanted to make sure you’re okay?” He makes it almost half a question, but still with the chance to act like it wasn’t one. The red of his hoodie pops almost violently in contrast to the grays and blacks of her outfit, the soft brown of her hair. Like a cartoony splash of blood.

“Thanks,” she says, and there’s definitely some finality in her tone, but she also doesn’t tell him to leave, so he climbs over the safety rail to join her. They sit as close as they did on the sofa earlier, arm-to-arm and leg-to-leg. He might be imagining it but she might also lean against him a little. “You’re warm. Why are boys always so _warm?_ ”

“Male privilege.”

A bubble of pride swells in his chest when she lets out a startled “ _Ha!_ ” of laughter at that. It’s a perfectly enunciated laugh, exactly how laughing is spelled in books. No more, no less. Her smile fades too fast.

“The rent was late,” Michelle says flatly after a few quiet minutes, trying for nonchalance even while hugging her knees tight against her stomach, “for, like, the third time _just_ this year, so I guess we’re getting evicted.”

And that's when his heart drops down to the pit of his stomach. This isn't something Spider-Man can fix. This isn't even something _Peter_ can fix. But adults can, and within seconds he's resolved to call Aunt May and see if there's anything they can do, anyone she knows with a spare room. "Do you need somewhere to stay?" he asks after a stunned silence that lasts probably a little too long. "You can stay in my room, I have bunk beds, I _know_ Aunt May will say it's okay, and our couch is super comfortable, your mom and sister could probably—"

He stops talking, because MJ's whole face is tightening and going slack and scrunching up with the effort she's putting into not crying. Her hand closes around his arm and clings tight. Not wanting to dislodge her grip is the only thing stopping him wrapping the arm around her instead.

"Michelle, you can talk to me," he says, and he can hear the plea in his own ears. He puts his free hand over hers and squeezes gently. "I'm your friend, I'm here for you. It's okay. _It's okay,_ MJ." He doesn't know what else to say.

Taking a shuddering breath, she wipes her eyes on his hoodie sleeve and shakes her head. "Mom decided…that we're moving back in with my dad," she says, and now there's a definite tone of fear mixed in with the anger and sadness. Her hand is so tight on his arm it would have really hurt if he didn't have his powers, but he doesn't want to pretend right now, not when she clearly needs something to hold onto.

He's never met MJ's dad. She talks so rarely about anything even remotely personal, but in points of conversation where most people would say _my parents_ Michelle's always says _my mom_. Just like Peter says _my aunt_ , like there's no one else. Some small part of Peter had just assumed her dad died before she transferred to Midtown, because she never mentions him in that kind of way that people don't mention things that hurt them. Which means her dad is still hurting her, but he’s alive.

"What can I do?" he asks, and she aggressively shrugs, but he can't just leave it there. "MJ, are you going to be okay living with him?"

Another shrug, this one accompanied by her free hand flying helpless into the air and settling on top of her head, restlessly patting down stray curls. He can't stop looking at her, watching every little change in her face (and it's going through a _lot_ of changes, swinging from anger to fear to desolation to determination to thoughtfulness and back to its neutral state in a few seconds, it's amazing, it's the most he's ever seen her emote before now), and finally she looks back.

In the dark her eyes are black, fathomless as space itself, and totally beautiful. He wishes they had a better reason to be sitting this close so he could tell her that.

She lets go his arm, but then loops her own arm through it and puts her head down on his shoulder. He shifts slightly so his chin rests on her hair and his back curls protectively around her. If the only thing he can do is give her something sturdy to lean against, he'll be her wall. If she needs somewhere to sleep away from her parents from now on, he'll be her shelter. And if she's cold, he'll be her jacket. _Not_ because he has a crush on her, either, but because she's his friend, and he would be a pretty lame superhero if he didn't even protect his own.

"I don't know," she whispers into the cold night air. "I haven't seen him in two years. I don't know what he's like anymore. He used to call every time he got back on the wagon and beg us to come home, but it's ben a while. A long time. But Mom says he…I don’t know, he’s making a lot of promises that I don't think he can keep."

He slips his arm free so he can hug it tight around her shoulders. A subterranean shiver rolls continuously under her skin, and she closes a hand around a gather of his t-shirt.

"I hope he keeps his promises."

"Me too,” she whispers, sniffling a little. “He’s s-still my _dad_.”

And because there's nothing else he can say that won't just make all of this worse, Peter doesn't say anything else. They sit there quietly until the distant thrum of bass is replaced by their teammates yelling their names out on the lawn, searching for them.

MJ picks her head up and sighs; it's not cold enough for her breath to vaporize in the air, but Peter still imagines he can see her bad feelings being exhaled on a little cloud. She's putting them aside to deal with later, unsticking herself from under his arm to rejoin the party. He's debating whether or not to stay up here a little longer and brood when her hand materializes in front of his face. She's looking down at him with her usual non-expression in place, but the corner of her mouth dimples just a little. "Let's go."

Taking her hand, Peter tries to do most of the actual work to get up so he doesn't accidentally fling her off the roof. "How long before you have to be out of your building?" he asks, giving her hand what he hopes is a reassuring squeeze. "I'll help you pack, if you want. After school. I'm...free."

Not really, he isn't, but he thinks he can probably delay his nightly patrols through the city by a few hours for a week or two. Most of the time nothing happens, anyway. If he tells Aunt May why he's missing dinner every night she'll totally understand and probably be kind of proud.

"No, don't," MJ says instead, pretty quickly. "I mean, it's fine, we don't have that much to pack, and—listen, don't tell anyone, okay? I just...it's drama, and you know I've made a sacred holy vow never to be involved in high school drama. So you _especially_ can't tell Ned, oh my _god_ , the whole team would know by Monday, _feeling things_ at me."

Peter can't help grinning; she must be feeling at least a little bit better if she's back to pretending she's inorganic material incapable of human emotion. “I won’t tell,” he promises. Before she can duck down the trapdoor again, though, he reaches out to take her hand again. “MJ. Just...if you ever need to get out and don’t have anywhere to go. You can come to my place, okay? You _should_ come to my place. Even if I’m not there, I swear it’s okay, Ned does it all the time when I’m—when I’m at my internship.”

“I won’t—“

“ _But if you do,_ ” he insists, then let’s go her hand. “That’s all I’m saying. And now I’ll stop bugging you and we can go back to the party.”

She punches his shoulder, then opens the trapdoor and stomps impudently down the stairs. “Let’s see how drunk Flash is by now. He probably has the tolerance of a two-year-old.”

“How do you know what a two-year-old’s alcohol tolerance is? _Where is your data on toddler inebriation, Michelle?!_ ”

At the bottom of the stairs she spins on her heel to look up at him. It’s probably the only time in their entire lives she’ll ever be shorter than him, and it feels really weird. “You caught me, I’ve been getting my little sister drunk on weekends,” she deadpans, then grins and flicks his forehead.

Only much later, when the party ends because Flash screamed “BATH TIME!” and turned the sprinklers on his unwitting and fully dressed party guests, when MJ somehow masterfully dodges the spray and vanishes before he can offer her a ride home, when May has brought him and Ned back to the apartment...only then does Peter realize that not once did MJ call him a loser, all night. And his hand burns with the memory of touching her. And she never gave back his hoodie.

He really, really hopes everything will be okay.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything is not okay.

It’s not immediately a disaster, which is good, at least. MJ spends the weekend packing with her mom. In two years they’ve accumulated a lot more than she previously thought, especially in books. She’s always been a bookworm to the point of academic detriment (especially the determined quarter in middle school she spent forcing her way through _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ instead of doing any actual homework assignments; her English teacher was almost too impressed to fail her, and so she did a 15-page essay for make-up credit. Her math and science scores were not so lucky), and her bedroom is basically a library with a bed inside.

On Sunday night, Mom takes one look around and heaves a huge, deep sigh. “Honey...”

“No.” She knows what the next words will be, and she sure as hell won’t hear them. “I am not negotiating with terrorism.”

“ _Michelle_.”

She takes a breath but won’t look at Mom, because if she looks at anything but the organized chaos of her bedroom she’s going to scream, because she knows what’s going to happen next. It’s the same thing that happened two years ago, when they left Dad’s house for this place. “I’ll pay the extra cost of moving them,” she says, trying not to let her voice shake. “With my money from the bodega. I’ve been saving up for a laptop, but I’ll use it for this instead.”

“There's no _space_ , Michelle!” Mom protests, exasperation clear in every line of her face and body. She’s clearly exhausted; she hasn’t _not_ been exhausted in two years. Working two jobs to make ends meet, paying MJ’s tuition at Midtown that isn’t supplemented by her scholarship, hounding her to keep on her homework when the lure of her books is particularly strong, always running, never stopping, never resting, driving herself to panic attacks and insomnia in the few scarce hours she has to sleep at night. For the last two years she’s been dead on her feet and it’s pretty clear that she’s hitting her limit on patience now.

The one thing she never did was raise her voice. Her voice echoes off the walls now, though, and MJ curls forward on the edge of her bed, hugging the nausea rolling through her stomach. “What about my bedroom?” she asks, and she hates, just hates how small and scared her voice sounds.

Mom hears it too, but her reaction is different. She sinks down onto the bed and hugs MJ to her side, all soft curves and vanilla body spray. “Baby, they’re _just books_ ,” she says patiently, rubbing MJ’s back. “We’ll get you new ones. Every birthday and Christmas, I _promise_. It’s just…it’s too much _hassle_. Besides, you’ve read all of them about a hundred times by now, anyway! You’ll be happier with new ones.”

Moments like these are the ones where MJ feels like a teenager the most, because right now she really, truly believes her mom will never understand her. She hasn’t had any friends in two years until Peter and Ned, only the voices in her books calling out from the fog of self-inflicted loneliness she always keeps wrapped around herself for protection. She’s smart, and she’s capable, and she knows that if she wants to she can have a, _ugh, social circle_. But she doesn’t want that. She wants a good book in her hand and a scholarship to a good school and she wants Peter Parker and—

Okay, Jesus, slow down.

“I’m keeping the ones I haven’t read yet,” she says, forcing as much finality into her voice as she can with hands shaking and eyes burning. To strengthen her argument she adds: “It would be a waste of money to donate them.”

There’s a long, thoughtful silence as Mom considers this. MJ keeps quiet to make it feel more like her decision. “I think that’ll be okay,” Mom decides. “Try to keep it to two boxes, okay?” She stands with a soft grunt of exhausted effort, knees creaking way too much for someone Mom’s age, and leaves the room with a soft, “Love you, honey.”

MJ says something back, totally automatic, and waits on her bed until the door closes. Then she throws her pillow hatefully at the door and cries into her mattress for 45 minutes. What a cliché.

The thing about being a self-aware teenager is the endless frustration that comes with every rush of hormones. MJ is certain that if she knows how teenagers tend to behave she should be immune to it, she should be vaccinated against the surges of incredibly painful _feeling_ that comes with the formative years of puberty. She doesn’t make herself into a sarcastic piece of shit at school because she feels nothing; she bares her teeth to the world in a snarl because she feels everything, all the time, and so much it makes her want to scream. There are so many different things going in so many different directions that sometimes it’s all she can do to shove a cutting one-liner from her mouth and flee the scene as soon as possible.

At least she’s capable of making it look cool when it happens.

The next few hours are pure agony, mostly because the books she hasn’t read yet won’t fit into only two boxes, and she goes into paroxysms of indecision over what to keep and what to give away because she’s _also_ trying to sneak in a few of her dog-eared favorites into the unread box in the hopes that Mom won’t go totally bonkers when she finds out, because sometimes _that_ kind of thing is the hill her mother chooses to die on. _It’s the principle of the thing, Michelle_ , she’ll say, and take it all away from her, and it makes her hands shake so bad that she has to take a break. 

She reads the _Crush_ anthology by Richard Siken. It makes her think of Peter. She wants to throw up. Instead she picks up her phone and calls him.

It rings three times before he picks up. “Hello?” he says, sounding breathless.

MJ breathes in, but realizes just now that she has no idea why she called him, and lets it out in a huge sigh. Her head hurts from crying and because she’s too mad to let Mom see her on her way to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“MJ?”

“You’re a loser,” comes tumbling out of her mouth. Why mess with a sure thing, after all? “Just-just wanted to remind you. In case you forgot.”

He’s not at home. MJ can hear traffic in the background on his end of the line, and his breathing is quiet like he’s using the mic on his earbuds instead of breathing directly into the phone. “MJ, are you okay?” he asks, and isn’t that just the million-dollar question? “Do you…hey, I think I’m close to your place and there’s an ice cream truck down—uh. Across the street. Do you want ice cream?”

It makes her smile when he stammers like that, which in turn makes her annoyed with herself. It’s the teenage self-awareness thing again. “I don’t think I should leave. I’m supposed to be packing.”

“Okay, let me rephrase: I could _bring you_ ice cream.”

She hates how much she likes Peter Parker in moments like this, because it's _so easy_ to do. He’s always been nice. From the first moment she stepped inside the doors of Midtown High Peter Parker has been nice, holding open doors for people and taking notes for absent classmates. And he’s got this really strong sense of right and wrong that means he’s going to get his ass kicked approximately eight thousand times before he gets into college. But it also means that he’s willing to bring her ice cream just because her voice sounds _a little different_ on the phone, and it makes her want to cry for different reasons altogether.

“I don’t think it’s a decent hour to be receiving gentleman callers,” she says blithely just to hear him laugh, because she’s a damn fool who loves to suffer.

“Weeelllll…” he says thoughtfully, and she can imagine him exactly in her mind’s eye, probably sitting on a bench or a low wall, swinging his feet like he’s six. MJ finds herself tensing, straining, waiting for what he’ll say next because she’s sure it’s going to make her night just a little bit better. “…I don’t have to use the door.”

What a thing to say that makes a shiver roll down her spine, because she’s going to be sixteen in a few weeks and right now he sounds _dangerous in just the right way_. “Yes,” she says, clutching the edge of the mattress in her sweating free hand. “Whatever you—yes. Do it.”

“For real?” Peter asks, his voice breaking a little, and she’s reminded that he’s also good because he never assumes to know what she’s going to say, but always gets really adorably excited when she says what he hopes she will. “Okay! Yeah! I’ll be there in, like…ten minutes? And what kind of ice cream do you want? There are Dreamsicles, Fudgsicles, cookie ice cream sandwiches, rocket pops, push pops, malt cups, strawberry shortcake bars…”

“Surprise me,” she says. Then adds: “Wait. No. Cookie sandwich,” because she’s not stupid. Artificially-fruit-flavored ice cream is the stuff of the devil. “If the ice cream melts before you get here I’m not letting you in.”

“How’ll you know if the ice cream’s melted before you let me in?” he retorts, panting like he’s running somewhere.

Crossing to her bedroom window, she looks out over the street as if she might be able to see him from here. “Because I know a lot of things.” And she’s starting to suspect another. A something that’s been sitting in the back of her brain since sophomore year began and videos of Spider-Man were being passed around the school like a social disease. “How’re you going to get up here?”

“Carefully?”

She makes a _psh!_ noise through her teeth and hangs up on him. It takes a minute to realize thatPeter’s only been to her apartment once to pick up a homework assignment, and that probably wasn’t enough time for him to find any secret entrances. The fire escape is in the kitchen, so it’s not like he can get in that way… MJ sits on the floor and keeps reading Siken to remind herself why feelings are awful.

Ten minutes later there’s a tapping on her window, and she looks up to see Peter clinging desperately to her window frame, arms shaking with effort to hold on, like holy shit. MJ leaps to her feet and shoves the window open, heart pounding like a kettledrum so hard she can’t even call him an idiot in her rush to let him inside before he falls.

Shoving him into the bedroom behind her, she looks down the side of the building. There’s no way a normal person could have scaled the building without equipment. She adds that to the mental list of evidence against him.

“Sorry it took so long,” he says sheepishly, fiddling with the zipper on his backpack before putting it on the floor. “There was a line, but nothing’s melted.” For a moment he hovers in the center of her bedroom, uncertain, and MJ realizes just how surreal it is to see him here. It’s like seeing a teacher outside of school, her doctor at the supermarket, an actor in a public bathroom. Someone who belongs in one place existing in another. It’s not a bad kind of new, but adjustment is definitely necessary.

He looks around again at the detritus of packing, and then his eyes settle on her, and oh, damn. Damn, damn, _damn_. Those big brown puppy-dog eyes are scraping the bottom of her frigging soul and it is _not okay_ when she’s already rubbed raw.

“ _You can sit down_ ,” she says slowly, in the tone people use to speak to idiots, to restore the balance between them. His knees buckle slightly in the middle of the room, oh my god, and he has to scramble to get her desk chair under himself before his ass hits the floor. What an embarrassment to mankind, honestly. “You act like you’ve never been in a girl’s room before.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and he doesn’t have to say a single word for her to know he’s loudly thinking _you know I haven’t, MJ, I’m a loser,_ to her in his mind. She doesn’t bother stifling the grin that spreads across her face. “Say no more, or I’m throwing your ice cream out the window.”

MJ claps both hands obediently over her mouth, and relief blooms in a radiant smile across his face. She’s glad that gender norms are only a social construct, because in that moment the only word she can use to describe him is _pretty_. Within seconds he’s produced a plastic-wrapped ice cream sandwich from his hoodie pocket—this one’s navy blue; his red one is stashed under her mattress with the halfhearted intent to give it back next week before classes end…but if he doesn’t remember she won’t remind him—and tosses it to her. She uncovers her mouth to catch it and drops down onto the bed.

Maybe she should be more concerned with the fact that her bedroom is a godawful mess. It’s not like Peter doesn’t know she’s in the process of moving out, though, so she isn’t gong to worry about it right now, except that Peter’s currently inspecting Siken’s back cover with interest.

“Not that one,” she says, and he drops it so quickly it lands on the floor. Instead she nods to the stack at his elbow. _I hope this reaches her in time_ is on top, and his eyebrows quirk with renewed interest as he picks it up and opens it. “Don’t get ice cream on it.”

He grunts absent-mindedly, already engrossed, and she feels a swell of completely unconfined affection for the fact that he takes her recommendations at face-value, and he listens to her like her word is gospel when she is often wrong, and shows up in the middle of his evening to bring her a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, and he wants to be here with her and he doesn’t see her books or her life as a waste of space. 

Vanilla ice cream melts onto her hand in sticky droplets. She’s watching Peter read and he doesn’t even notice, lips twitching with concentration. 

“Are there really only…?” he starts to ask, but looks up and catches her staring. A blush rises up his neck and into his cheeks. “Do I have ice cream on my face?”

She shakes her head. “Nope, just…just, uh…” Oh my god. Oh my god, this is not happening, she can not under any circumstances get tongue-tied around Peter Parker. Just because her guts have turned into live snakes and her heart is pounding and her palms sweating and eyes burning doesn’t mean she can’t maintain her cool girl cred. “Just a stupid expression.”

There. That works.

He turns redder and takes a bite of his strawberry shortcake bar. “I like the one about missing who you were,” he mutters, and looks up into her eyes again, like he wants to say something else. She makes a mental note. They eat their ice cream in silence, and she sneaks to the bathroom to get a damp washcloth for their sticky hands before anyone is allowed to touch another book.

“How many boxes do you think it’ll take for all these?” asks Peter, surveying the shelves crammed shoulder-to-jowl along every bare expanse of wall in her bedroom. There aren’t even any posters, there isn’t space. 

_There’s no space, Michelle!_ Mom’s voice echoes in her head, just that little bit too loud and too sharp, and a lump starts to form in her throat. “Two,” she says, half-choked. “That’s all I’m allowed to take. None I’ve read before.” It’s such a stupid thing to cry about, they’re seriously just books, but the utter devastation in Peter’s face is enough to remind her that some people care about how she feels about all of this. Just not her mom. Probably not her dad. She presses a hand over her eyes as if hiding is somehow less obvious than just crying, and seconds later her mattress dips under Peter’s weight and his arm is around her shoulders.

“That’s not fair,” he says softly. She does not lean against him, she doesn’t because this is stupid and dramatic and it won’t actually matter one day when she’s a member of congress, but right now? Right now it feels like the end of the world. “Why’s your mom saying that?”

MJ sits up, stiffens, shies away because that’s what she’s good at. “It is not ours to question why, in her opinion,” she sniffs and shoves an errant lock of hair behind her ear. Because it might physically hurt to look at him right now, instead she stares down at her feet and wonders what he’s thinking. Which is so stupid, Peter Parker has a glass face, all she has to do is look at him to know what he’s thinking, but she’s pretty sure whatever it is will be stupid and noble and very, very superheroic of him.

“Ever read _The Diary of Anne Frank_?” he asks with the tone of a blooming idea in his voice.

Rolling her eyes at him because what a stupid question, it’s only when he hops off the bed and starts to unzip his backpack does she catch the drift. “That’s a seriously insensitive metaphor for what you’re doing,” she says, but her heart is beating fast as she watched him. “Especially when _The Book Thief_ is literally on the shelf two inches from your nose.”

He glances up with what can only be described as a dopey grin. “I never claimed to be good at metaphors, that’s your thing. Now hand me your favorites so they can hide at my apartment.”

Less than fifteen minutes later his bag is bulging at the seams and they’re both feeling antsy and nervous; Mom knocked on the door when dinner was ready and they only just managed to hide Peter in the closet before she stuck her head in. The window is open again and he’s got a leg out, but stops to turn back and face her. “You can bring more to school tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve got lots of space...under my bed. Just, uh—maybe don’t watch me climb down, okay? I’m not gonna look very cool doing it with the extra weight. Kind of embarrassing...”

He’s so shifty and nervous about it that MJ doesn’t even have to make a mental note this time. She _knows_. She’s known all along, probably, but didn’t let herself care enough, didn’t want to think about it because acknowledging something makes it real. It’s obvious why he hasn’t told anyone, either. She’s not stupid, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t _think_ she is, either.

“ _Peter_ ,” she says exasperatedly, and he turns back again to look at her. “That’s a flat wall and we’re four floors up. Even if you were _really good_ at parkour you wouldn’t be able to climb that, up or down. Don’t pretend.” He goes sickly pale, then blushes so hard he looks like the red sunset framing the city behind him. “You’re literally the worst liar I’ve ever met, like it’s a good thing you have a-a _mask_ because I think it’s the only thing reminding you _not_ to give up your secret identity when you introduce yourself to people.”

“MJ, please—” he starts to beg.

She holds up a hand and his voice stutters to a halt. “Do I look like an idiot?” she asks. “Of course I’m not going to _tell_. It’s a _secret_ identity for a reason.”

Breathing out a huge sigh of relief, he reaches out to snatch her hand from the air and squeezes it while looking meaningfully into her eyes. “You’re already _so much better_ at this than Ned,” he smiles weakly. “I wanna know how you figured it out, but…”

“Tomorrow,” she nods in agreement, pulling her hand free. Part of her doesn’t want him to go. The other part wants him long gone before Mom checks on her again. They war with one another as she watches him scale the wall using only his hands and feet. He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do tomorrow, too, for how he does that and how he got that way and how…just how. How he does any of it.

Then a dark, awful thought hits her square in the chest, it makes her palms sweat and her intestines tie in knots, it makes her want to throw up: _what if he doesn’t make it home tonight? What if he tries to save someone and loses his life instead?_ And then she gets the secret identity thing a little more. 

Mom’s definitely waiting now, but what’s another minute at this point? she figures as she picks up her phone in shaking hands.

“Hey, what’s up?” Peter asks innocently on the other end, a little breathless from the climb down. MJ presses closed to the window so she can see him turn around, look up, see her, wave meekly. “Did I forget something?”

“No, I...” she starts, wanting to say _be careful with my books you loser_ or _if you bend any of the covers I’ll expose your secret identity_. Instead she asks: “Don’t you miss who you were, before who you became took over your life?” and winces when his breath catches in recognition of the poems he read at her desk not even an hour ago. She hopes he took that one for himself.

In the alley below her bedroom window, he hangs up the phone and puts it in his pocket. He looks up at her, pale face a small moon against dirty pavement. Then he does something amazing: with a flick of his wrist there’s a web stuck to the top of her window frame, and it barely looks like he’s exerting any energy at all to pull himself back up in one fluid motion, crouching on her sill, his face inches from hers.

“Sometimes,” he says, softly. “And sometimes, when I get to do stuff like this, less.”

It takes the span of two heartbeats to realize _oh my god he’s going to kiss me_ , and the spike of panic that ensues is enough to freeze her for a second. Because she wants Peter to kiss her, has wanted that for two frigging years, but—not like this. Not when he’s clearly riding some _holy shit she uncovered my secret identity_ adrenaline rush and not when she’s already feeling vulnerable and exposed by the evening’s emotional rollercoaster before he showed up.

So, feeling like an idiot, she puts two fingers in the center of his chest to stop him leaning in. And she can tell he wants to because he has that stupid glowy puppy-dog look in his eyes like he’s in an anime or something. 

She pushes just hard enough for him to lose his balance on the sill and topple backwards out the window. He yelps, easily catches himself on a web to the building across the alley, and lands on the pavement below with a thud and a plaintive call of “ _Heeeyyyy!_ ” like she just shoved him into the lockers at school and not down four floors to the hard, unforgiving pavement. MJ sticks her head and shoulders out the window and waves down at him. Even from all the way up here she can see him grinning before he leaves.

This is bad, she realizes when Mom catches her still smiling to herself while she helps Tabby eat her dinner. Life is already complicated enough without her brains turning to mush over Peter Parker. She’ll just have to ignore it and hope he doesn’t try that again.

Or hope that  _she_ doesn’t try anything, either.


	3. Chapter 3

**** The next day at school, Peter isn’t sure what to expect from MJ, but there’s enough time before she shows up for first period that he gives Ned a rapid fire play-by-play of the previous night’s developments, at least the parts that don’t give up anything MJ asked him to keep a secret. So, in the abridged version: she called while he was on patrol, they had ice cream, and she totally outed him as Spider-Man.

“You never bring _me_ ice cream when you’re on patrol,” is Ned’s first skeptical thought, “and I call you all the time.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Peter, were you and MJ on a—?”

“Sup, losers?” asks MJ as she literally comes crashing into them, butting with her shoulders and armsful of books that have to be returned to the school library. Only a few of them are actually for class. There’s also a duffel bag hanging from her shoulder, which she explains to Ned’s scrutiny as _full of none of your business, Leeds_ , while carefully avoiding Peter’s eyes. Contraband, then. A happy flush rises up his neck as they all walk to the library together before class.

At lunch she sits directly next to him instead of her newly accustomed two seats away. At least for half of the lunch period; when she makes a joke about Manifest Destiny he feels brave enough to nudge her knee with his under the table, and suddenly she inches away, and he feels awful.

Because maybe he’s been misinterpreting things. Maybe he’s overstepping his bounds, he’s totally being a patriarchal jerk and invading her personal space while she’s going through a hard time, which is super exploitative and just _not cool, Peter_. Even if MJ acted like maybe she wanted him to kiss her last night, that’s—that’s just not okay. He has to be more careful. She’s hurting and vulnerable and he can’t take advantage. So he’ll just keep his distance, for now, until stuff with her parents settles down.

Ned says something something _Peter’s big secret_ , and he looks up to find them both looking back at him expectantly.

“Oh, right,” he says, straightening as he faces MJ. “You had questions.”

“Not questions so much as confirmations,” she shrugs, scooting close again so she can lower her voice. She really is going to be _so_ much better at this secret identity thing than Ned. “Are Ned and I the only people who know?”

“Aunt May figured it out a week after the homecoming dance,” Ned supplies for him.

“And that’s why you—Ned, it is either really sweet or really weird that you also call Peter’s aunt Aunt May, I haven’t decided yet—that’s why you ditched us at the dance,” MJ states, biting her lip briefly. Probably for the same reason Peter feels a small blanch of shame for doing the ditching, accompanied by that little soul-deep reminder of almost dying that makes his guts clench. “You were fighting the...Liz’s dad.”

He nods, but has to clear is throat before he says anything to stop his voice from shaking. “He found out who I was, on the way to the dance,” he admits. “He wanted to-to _make a deal_. I let him go on making weapons, or he would...or he would kill Aunt May and Ned and-and probably you and then me.”

That makes MJ frown, a small line forming between her brows. “Why would be kill me, because I had a crush on you?” she asks, then clamps her mouth shut with wide startled eyes. Ned lets out probably the loudest and most dramatic gasp possible for the given situation, staring open mouthed at her. Her cheeks start to turn red, and Peter realizes she hadn’t meant to say that. He’s never seen her this embarrassed before, and quickly determines to play it cool even though his insides are screaming _WAIT HANG ON MJ HAD A CRUSH ON ME DOES SHE STILL OR AM I SCREWED_ with the Kill Bill sirens going off in his head for good measure.

“Yes,” is all he says, “but I couldn’t let him get away with it. And I couldn’t let him...do all _that_ , either, so my only choice was so stop him.” He nods at her to ask anything else once he thinks she’s recovered.

“Does Liz know?”

The very idea, oh god-! "No, no she doesn't, and she shouldn't," he says definitively, which, okay, they both seem to accept that at face value. He doesn't really care whether what he does affects Liz's opinion of him anymore, but he would feel just, like... _really bad_ about putting her dad in prison. Even if he was a dangerous supervillain, he's still her dad.

After a moment's thought, MJ nods as if satisfied with his answer. "How's the suit so tight but you can get out of it so fast?" she asks skeptically.

"I-I don't feel comfortable disclosing Stark tech—"

"There's a thing on the chest that he presses and it turns huge!" Ned exclaims gleefully. "It makes a farty noise like when you let air out of a balloon!"

MJ's face lights up at this news, and he just knows she's going to make him show her sometime in the near future, and he's totally going to egg Ned's house. Tonight. But the sheer delight in MJ's eyes is almost...almost worth it.

Two nights later, when she convinces him to show her and she laughs so hard tears roll down her face? Yeah, okay, definitely worth it.

School ends on Thursday, so families can get a head start on their summer vacations, and teachers can flee the city before its resident teenagers are set loose like escaped rabid zoo animals, and Peter is actually bummed. Not that he isn’t looking forward to having free time again, getting to patrol the city more and do what he wants with his time for two months, but school is also the only time he ever really sees MJ, besides last Sunday when he was suddenly in her room for the first time ever. And he wants to see more of her, lots more, like, every day but not in a school way.   He already _knows_ he’ll see Ned every day, so he’s less worried about that. 

The last period of the last day is reserved for yearbook signing. Peter has one because May thinks it’ll be important to him one day; meanwhile he thinks that in ten years he’ll look through it and remember everyone who ever bullied him. Michelle seems to have a similar idea, because she’s on the bleachers reading something bigger than her own torso.

“Any last-minute contraband, Liesel?” he asks, because he totally read _The Book Thief_ , but knows that her mom took her to the thrift store yesterday to drop off all the books and clothes and knick-knacks that didn’t make the cut for the big move. She shakes her head without looking up but doesn’t cuss him out, so he figures it’s okay to sit next to her for a while. He nudges her with his shoulder while watching their classmates mill around the gym like a hive of bees in desperation to exchange pollen in the form of yearbook signatures. “So…can we hang out over the break?”

“I don’t know, can you stop bugging me?” she retorts. It stings a little, because he can’t tell if she’s saying it as his good friend MJ or as scary distant Michelle. So he just says nothing.

After five agonizing minutes, she nudges him with her knee.

“Of course we’re gonna hang out over the break, loser, I’m just at a really good part.”

Relief floods his whole system with endorphins and he grins, as stupidly happy as he might be after an escape from certain death. “Cool,” he says, watching Ned and Cindy hound complete strangers for signatures just for the fun of it. “You got a yearbook I can sign?” He only asks because he knows she’ll make that adorable _psh!_ noise she makes when he’s being insufferable.

“ _Psh_ ,” she says, “as if I’d fall for that capitalistic social construct. If the school really wanted us to care about our precious memories the books would be free, or there would be higher quality school programs in place so we actually _did_ get the most out of the year.”

“Huh,” he agrees monosyllabically, looking down at his yearbook, “that makes sense. Will you sign mine anyway?”

She narrows her eyes at him over the top of her book, and he feels a pleasant kind of shiver rolls down his spine. Jury’s still out if she currently likes him or only had a crush on him in the past tense, but he honestly doesn’t think he minds either way. She’s his friend, and she’s a good friend, especially since she actually pulls out a pen with a long-suffering sigh and takes his yearbook to sign.

He doesn't get it back until ten minutes before the final bell rings. There’s a drawing of him, MJ, and Ned at their lunch table entirely taking up one of the several blank pages reserved for signing. Instead of her signature at the bottom, she just titled the piece “A Weirdo, A Nerd, and One (1) Loser Boi.” Drawing-MJ has a book titled My Year With Losers in painfully minuscule letters, drawing-Ned has a stack of Legos, and drawing-Peter is asleep on his arms, the back of his shirt tucked up a little to reveal...well, it wouldn’t look like anything but the band of his boxers to someone just looking, but Peter recognizes the web pattern of his suit in the inky lines.

“How the hell do you draw so good in pen?!” he asks, a little awestruck. Looking at this, at his friends, the only friends he’s ever needed and the best friends he could have had this year, it makes a lump rise in his throat. The lines are artfully messy, their features barely defined, but MJ still somehow managed to make them look _alive_. He thinks if he put one of those Renaissance golden ratio spirals over it, it would fit. They’re all leaning a little toward one another, and it’s...it’s a gift. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever made for him, permanently inscribed into his book. 

Actually, fuck the yearbook, he just wants to tear out the page and hang it on his wall. He wants it tattooed on the actual muscle wall of his heart. He can’t stop looking at it.

When the bell startles him into looking up, MJ’s already gone.

It’s actually an extremely anxiety-inducing thing, knowing that she’s going to a new living situation she isn’t totally sure about and not being able to do anything about it. He’s still the only person at school who knows, he thinks, so he texts after a few days to check on her after he swings by her apartment and finds it sitting empty.

**Peter:** how’s the new digs?  
 **MJ:** good. It’s weird.  
 **Peter:** weird how?  
 **MJ:** Rental house. Never had 2 floors before.  
 **Peter:** Whooaaaaa you’re moving up in the world Jones  
 **MJ:** I know I’m a walking American Dream  
 **Peter:** try to remember the little people  
 **MJ:** Never heard of them.

He grins to himself, lying flat on his bed and staring up at his phone while Ned snores in the top bunk.

**Peter:** Send pics of ur room?  
 **MJ:** Pervert  
 **Peter:** Omg how’d u know I was gonna ask to see ur undies next??? Cmon it’s just your room.  
 **MJ:** idk, I remember how u were IN my room. Can ur delicate constitution take it?  
 **Peter:** I’m already lying down so if I swoon I won’t have to sue it’s fine

A few minutes later he gets a Snapchat friend request, which, holy crap. MJ basically took a sacred vow never to participate in any social media outside of sharing protest plans and reputable news sources on Facebook. At first he thinks maybe it’s a weird coincidence, but when he opens the request the username is **MJ_Bushdid911** and he almost laughs out loud as he accepts the request. His first snap from her is a video that he has to delay opening until he finds his headphones.

_Okay, so first of all,_ her disembodied voice says, slightly hushed as the camera aims at an unmade bed, _my room is freaking huge. It’s like twice as big as my old room. New bed, super comfy, and check this out._ After panning enticingly up and down the length of the bed, the camera shifts to point at an entire low wall composed of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The two boxes she was allowed to move don’t even take up a third of one shelf. 

The ten-second video ends and another immediately starts. _Dad made those himself, in the garage, because we apparently have one of those_ , she continues. The camera swivels to a new-used looking work desk with a lamp and the same big book she was reading at yearbook signing on it. _New desk from the Goodwill. Dad says we’re going laptop shopping this weekend, which is...undeniably pretty sweet. Oh!_

The camera shakes and another new video, aimed into a dark but impressively sized closet. It would be more impressive, admittedly, if MJ had more than maybe six outfits, but Peter can’t help but be charmed by her excitement. _Huuuuuge closet!_ She aims the camera at a mirror on the back of the closet door so he can see her; her hair is a bushy adorable mess and she’s wearing her pajamas— _and his red hoodie oh my god he's going to puke and die of happiness_. She flips him off, aptly.

_We’re all going new-stuff-shopping tomorrow_ , she says, turning on the front-facing camera, and all the breath rushes out of Peter’s lungs at how pretty she is up close. _Tabby’s getting a million new toys and clothes and everything. Mom and Dad want to go on vacation, too, so...stay tuned as this news story develops, I guess. You suck. Goodnight!_

She ends the video with what is probably a sarcastic smacking kissy-face at the camera, but it leaves Peter laying in the dark, phone held to his chest, grinning at the underside of the top bunk. Sure, she’ll probably say she only got Snapchat so there wouldn’t be any permanent evidence of her bedroom existing in either of their phones somewhere, but also...she got Snapchat just so she could give him a little video tour of her room. She wanted him to see it. He wonders if she’ll show him the rest of the house once they’re settled in. He wonders if he’ll get to meet her parents and baby sister. He wants to. He really, really wants to.

**Peter:** tmrw u need to try the face filters  
 **MJ:** the what?????  
 **Peter:** turn on frontfacing, tap ur face, pick a filter, ur welcome  
 **MJ:** holy shit   
**MJ:** send me the puppy face one

The next twenty minutes are a constant stream of back-and-forth shitty low-light selfies with various different Snapchat filters. MJ’s look a lot better than his with her lamp on. He takes a screenshot of her with a flower crown and big sparkly eyes with the caption _tryna look like u don’t gotta fart in class_ and makes it his phone’s lockscreen. Definitely worth waking Ned up with his laughing.

It puts his mind at ease, too, knowing that things seem to be going okay with MJ and her parents. He wonders what it must have been like for her dad, meeting Tabby for probably the first time; she hadn't even been born yet when MJ transferred to Midtown, and now she's almost two and talking and stuff. He hopes it was good, and he hopes it _is_ good, and he hopes it _stays_ good. MJ's had a hard week, having to move her entire life in just a few days, and deserves some good to come from all the stress she's been under.

Maybe they'll go on vacation to, like, the biggest library in the world. That sounds like the only kind of vacation MJ would really enjoy. Peter googles _best libraries in United States_ and falls asleep searching.

They don't actually talk or see each other much over the next two weeks, but she sends him a lot of Snapchats (he's absurdly proud of this rapid conversion to the app; she seems to genuinely love it). Her tea, her world-famous grilled cheese sandwich— _famous according to who?_ he asks, and she sends him her middle finger—lots of pictures and videos of Tabby because her parents are going on a lot of dates and haven't found a regular babysitter yet, a video from her point of view as she goes on what sounds like the most agonizing jog in human history with a man's amused laughter taunting her in the background. 

_Oh my god, Dad, you are so rude!_ she yells, laughing, before the video cuts out, and Peter feels so happy he wants to cry a little. 

**Peter:** sounds like ur having fun  
 **MJ:** IS THAT A JOKE??? HE MADE ME JOG PETER HE'S CLEARLY A SUPERVILLAIN THWIP HIM.  
 **Peter:** lmao sorry I can't thwip without proof he's MAKING u run.   
**Peter:** but seriously is it ok??? u good???

She doesn't reply right away. Instead, an hour later, a new notification pops up on his Snapchat. It's a picture of MJ, Tabby, and an unassuming white man who must be her dad, crowded cheek-to-cheek into the frame of the picture, all beaming big, happy smiles. He takes a screenshot, then sends back a selfie but replaces his eyes with heart emojis.

**Peter:** I'm super glad  
 **MJ:** me fuckin too dude  
 **MJ:** come to Coney Island w us next week?

His heart leaps into his skull and tries to beat its way out of his forehead, because is this real? On some level he thought it would take at least another two years to get invited over to her new house, like their friendship or whatever it is they're doing is rebooting and he has to start over on first base. But it's only been two weeks and she wants him there? In her _home?_ Where her parents live also? He's going to die. He's going to jump out the window and throw himself into oncoming traffic and just _die_.

"Yes!" he says to his empty bedroom, and actually legit starts punching and kicking the air because apparently talking to himself isn't weird enough. "Yes, yes, yes _yesyesyesyesyes!_ "

"Yes, _what?_ "

Freezing into a statue-kid, he turns to see Aunt May watching from his (open, obviously) bedroom door.

"Yes," he repeated, stunned. "Yes... _yes_ , I _will_ ask my beautiful, youthful supermodel of a perfect and benevolent aunt if I can go to Coney Island with a friend and her parents sometime next week."

" _Her?_ " Aunt May echoes, eyebrows shooting up and a delighted grin spreading across her face. "Wait, are you asking about MJ? Are you going to _Coney Island_ with _MJ?_ " 

Peter takes a second to readjust his stance into that of a normal, well-adjusted human instead of his previous mid-happy-dance flail. "Uh, I am if you give me _permission_ to go," he says hopefully. "It's...probably not a big deal. MJ's parents just got back together after, uh, _a while_ , so she probably just wants a friend around so it isn't awkward."

Leaning against the doorframe, May crosses her arms with the biggest I-totally-told-you-so grin on her face. "Okay," she agrees amicably. "Yeah, you should go. Should I come too?"

_"N-no!"_

She laughs the _loudest_ and _meanest_ laugh that a teenager in the throes of gooey teenager love can possibly hear as she walks away. " _Oh, I love you, my little baby boy!_ " she yells from the kitchen, still laughing in spurts.

“The worst,” he mutters to himself, texting MJ that of course, he would love to go to Coney Island with her, and to just tell him what day and time they were going.

**MJ:** oh my dude we’re making a whole day of it  
 **MJ:** come over for breakfast at 8 Friday and we’re staying until hot dogs on the beach for dinner  
 **MJ:** it’s gonna be the shit   
**MJ:** don’t stand me up Parker

He isn’t totally sure, because it’s really hard to convey tone over text without emojis, but Peter thinks he can sense a little bit of genuine insecurity in that last text. Remembering Liz with a pang, he determines that he’ll do extra patrols all week to discourage criminal activity, then take the day off from superheroing. Sure, he had a really good reason to ditch Liz at homecoming, which is why he’s still going to wear his suit under his clothes, but that doesn’t make it feel any better.

**Peter:** barring actual alien invasion and imminent apocalypse, I promise I’ll be there.  
 **MJ:** if the apocalypse is imminent and unavoidable u may as well come anyway :P  
 **Peter:** fair enough, we’ll face god and walk backward into hell together lmao  
 **MJ:** I said the apocalypse, not PE

As he rereads the conversation later that night on patrol, he starts to get even more excited than before. Phrasing is essential to avoiding any miscommunication and MJ knows that, he’s seen her edit a text message six times to make sure she’s making her intentions clear before sending it, and now she’s demanded he not stand her up for an all-day carnival trip with her parents. 

“It is,” he says aloud to himself for courage as he finally composes a return text. “It totally is. You got this, Spidey.”

**Peter:** it’s a date. No cancelling w/o at least 2 days notice for illness/injury. Scout’s honor.  
**MJ:** u were never a boy scout tho

He can’t resist punching the air and almost falls off the roof; she didn’t correct him when he said it was a date! That totally counts!

**Peter:** shit u right!!!! Spidey’s honor then :)/  
**MJ:** more like loser’s honor :)))))))

Holy shit. It’s serious.

When his communicator crackles to life he’s still mid-happy dance. _Robbery on 8th, Peter, what are you doing?_ Ned asks, accompanied by the sound of him guy-in-the-chair-ing back in Peter’s bedroom.

“Nothing dude, on my way now!” Peter quickly replies, thwipping and swinging away into the night. He literally feels light as a feather, free and happy and excited in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time, probably not since before Uncle Ben died. Like he has a purpose again. Which is so stupid, because he’s pretty sure being an actual superhero qualifies as a significant purpose in life, but whatever. He’s turning sixteen in three weeks, he’s been aceing parallel parking with Aunt May, and he’s going on a date with Michelle Jones. Life seriously can’t get any better.

All week he has a seriously good streak, crime prevention-wise. He stops the robbery in record time and two more muggings that night alone, and over the next six days goes on to catch a petnapper, helps three little old ladies cross the street, saves a kid who lost grip of his dad’s hand and fell into a sewer drain (he and Ned had finally gotten up the courage to watch IT the night before, too, so that was a particularly terrifying fifteen minutes), and is home in time to help May make dinner every single night. He also gets his final report card back for the school year and got all straight-As, too, which is kind of a miracle considering how the year started. May gives him a million proud kisses all over his face until he finally screams from adolescent embarrassment, but secretly he’s actually really gooey and happy about it on the inside.

Thursday night MJ finally sends him her new address, and he makes sure to leave extra early on Friday so he isn’t even a minute late. Which means he gets there an entire 45 minutes early and has to awkwardly loiter at a nearby convenience store until 7:55 and he can appear punctual. He can’t mess this up.

Heart beating like a bomb in a birdcage, he takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell. Then it occurs to him that maybe he should have brought MJ’s mom flowers or something. 

Too late now.


	4. Chapter 4

MJ honestly doesn’t know what to expect from moving in with her dad, but somehow finds herself agonizing over what to wear the morning they’re going to meet him at the new house he’s renting. She stares at herself in the mirror possibly longer than totally necessary, trying to evaluate how much she’s changed in two years besides in height. _Has_ she changed?

Has _he?_

Probably. Hopefully. He and Mom have been having hours-long talks on the phone every night since making the decision to get back together (and, Mom revealed a few days ago, every day for weeks before that too), and according to Mom he’s actually turned a huge corner. No drinking for the last six months, AA every week and additional meetings every time he _wants_ to drink. He got his physician’s license back last month and is practicing again, hence the house. He asks about MJ and Tabby every day.

Her hands shake as she pulls on her backpack and pulls out the handle on her rolling suitcase for the walk to the subway. The rest of their stuff was shipped over yesterday in a moving truck, by hired movers; their stuff didn't even fill a quarter of the available space. Sometimes MJ forgets there was a time when she wasn't poor as shit. When she was little everything was taken care of because Daddy had a good job and they didn't have to worry about money or where to live or affording new clothes. 

Then he started _drinking_ all their money sometime around Halloween when she was eleven years old, and it was all downhill from there. Her parents fought constantly. The very nice apartment they lived in was swapped for a smaller, shittier one. Michelle was so stressed out her grades started falling, and Dad started yelling at her every time she brought home a note from school, totally missing the point that he was the reason she was distracted and sleepy and losing weight at goddamn twelve because her guts were constantly tied up in knots and she couldn't eat right. For three years her life was a constant—

—only that's the problem, isn't it? Because it wasn't constant. Sometimes life was really good, little moments of happiness scattered like freckles across those three years. Trips to Coney Island, watching movies together, going to the library and hanging out in total perfect companionable silence, elbow-to-elbow. 

And looking back through the wisdom of just a few years, MJ knows how hard Dad was fighting to get sober, even when he was more in love with booze than with Mom. She remembers how he was constantly sick from withdrawal, drying out for endless days before giving in again. The smell of sickness hovering like a miasma over their apartment, Dad laying in bed shivering and white. Mom taking care of him even though she hated him a little bit back then. MJ hated him a lot back then.

Even though it's never the kids' fault for parents splitting up and all that other common sense crap, speaking strictly on a technical basis, Tabby _was_ the catalyst for Mom and MJ ditching on Dad like thieves in the night. Dad had tried to get sober maybe four times by then, he was mad as a caged weasel all the time and seemed like he might be about to give up trying altogether. It had been a year since he lost his medical license for coming in to work so stinking drunk he passed out in the middle of a procedure. Mom woke MJ up with a whisper and a gentle touch, got her out of bed, put her already-packed bag in her hand, and they took the subway to one of her classmates' houses _just until I get things figured out_.

"The only thing that'll get through to that man is taking away what's most important to him," Mom told her while trying really heroically not to start bawling on the subway. She possessively stroked MJ's hair. "That's you, baby."

She was stuck there for four days. Michelle hadn't even known the girl that well, doesn't even remember her name now, but their moms were friends so it was the best option at the time, and it wasn't so bad once she stopped worrying that Mom had abandoned her there forever. The upcoming school year started to gnaw on her nerves more than anything else, her freshman year of high school. Even as a little kid she had had big dreams for her future, and didn't want this one weird bad week to interfere with them.

Mom came back, though, and took her to the apartment that would be their home for the next two years, and told her she was going to have a baby sister. She stopped wearing baggy clothes all the time and holy crap, Mom was, like, _seriously pregnant_. No wonder she'd been in such a hurry to get out of there, with Dad acting so unpredictably all the time.

It was kind of weird, expecting her first little sibling at the painfully tender age of fourteen, but also pretty cool and exciting and totally overshadowed by Mom's second announcement that she had managed to beg Midtown Academic High School to let her apply for a scholarship significantly past the cutoff date, and MJ had to write an essay about any person living or dead who made her into the person she was today. She wanted to write it about Hillary Clinton or Malala or, like, Beyonce, but she was also desperate to get in and knew the fastest way to most white people's hearts and made it about Mom instead, so she could go into all the nasty gory (and somewhat embellished) details of the last three years and guarantee herself a spot.

Needless to say, it worked.

She kind of feels bad about her exaggeration now that she's going to see her dad again. Part of her actually never thought it would happen, had closed herself off so totally and definitively to the possibility, desperate to protect herself from the inevitable heartache, that it never crossed her mind. Just like making friends never crossed her mind either. She already lost so much valuable time in the last three years before transferring to Midtown that she figured the only thing that would get her into Harvard was to ignore the outside world, join one team and do great at it, and rise the student ranks to valedictorian. 

Then she met Peter Parker, and that all pretty rapidly flew out the window. But whatever, he's cute but also so smart that they can keep each other on track, Spider-Man notwithstanding. 

The train bumps to a stop at their destination. Still in Queens, which is good for her commute to school. Mom says a quick _oh sweet baby Jesus please_ under her breath to brace herself as she straps Tabby back into her stroller. MJ thinks she might definitely puke, feels dizzy as she's buffeted by the surge of disembarking passengers onto the platform.

And there he is. 

Her heart screams _Daddy!_ before she can clamp down the lid on that instinct, and suddenly Dad is crying and Mom is crying and Tabby is so confused that she’s crying and Michelle is a statue, she is a rock, she is a river, she cannot let this asshole who flipped her life upside down see her vulnerable underbelly just because she didn’t know she missed him.

He hugs Mom for a really long time. Like, so long MJ feels like she has to avert her eyes, but it at least gives her time to get her own self under control. She reminds herself he’s just a person, just a random ginger dude on the subway who’s making her mom cry from happiness now but also made her mom cry, like, a million times from sadness, so really, the balance is totally off-whack, this moment doesn’t erase what he’s done in the past, and it’s going to take more than a rental house in the Queens suburbs to—

MJ makes the awful mistake of looking, just as Dad looks at her with his eyes full of limpid tears or whatever. His hair’s more gray than red now, she realizes, and he’s lost weight. “Hi, honey,” he croaks, then coughs, then laughs at himself with a bashful shake of the head.“I…I _really missed you_.”

Sighing, she sidles reluctantly closer. Tabby fusses while mom wrestles her out of her stroller, so for the moment she and her father are alone with one another. 

“So…do I call you Robert?” she asks, testing the waters.

He sticks his hands deep into his pockets, taking a deep breath through his nose as he looks around the crowded train platform. “If you want to,” he finally concedes. “I mean—I’d prefer _Dad_ , but I’m a little biased. Can I give you a hug?”

_I am a rock,_ she tells herself. 

_I am a mountain,_ she tells herself.

“I guess,” she shrugs like she doesn’t actually care, and he folds her up into his arms like she’s still thirteen years old, and if she cries a little bit into his shoulder he doesn’t snitch on her.

They walk home, and it’s—it’s like a real house. There’s a minuscule porch and the suggestion of a front yard and there’s a distinct gap between it and the house next door. Her bedroom’s on the second floor, which, holy crap, there’s a second floor. It’s little more than a refurbished attic, the ceiling slants with the angle of the roof, but who cares? There’s a bedroom with a huge closet and she has her own bathroom. It's basically a teenage girl’s wet dream; she’s confident enough in her femininity to admit that.

And there are bookshelves. The long, low wall opposite her bed is lined from one end to the other with them, right up to where the slanted ceiling starts. They're not, like, amazingly sturdy and obviously had to be nailed directly to the wall to keep from tipping, but hey, all her books fit and they don't fall apart. That's good enough for her. All the books only fill up a row and a half of the first shelf, and her rough guesstimation of how many books she smuggled into school for Peter to hide at his place probably will only fill another row or two. Cool. Lots of room for new ones. Now Mom just has to do good on her promise.

“The landlord says we can repaint, redecorate, remodel,” Dad explains, hovering at the top of the stairs as she puts her suitcase on the bed. “The sheets are—I wasn’t sure what color you’d want, I had to guess. We can get more tomorrow, and more than just the basic stuff for your bathroom. Mom says you have to clean it yourself, fair warning.”

“I’m fifteen, I think I’m capable of cleaning my own bathroom,” she says, keeping her tone carefully short so he doesn’t get the impression that she’s going to make this transition easy for him. He didn’t exactly make the last one easy on her, after all. "And sheets are for sleeping on, color doesn't exactly matter." She unzips her suitcase with brute force (the zipper always sticks on the top corner) and starts shaking out her wrinkled clothes. It's a fairly big suitcase they got at the Goodwill, fitting all of her clothes; her entire wardrobe probably won't take up more than half of the generous closet space.

Dad hovers for a few more minutes as she sorts through the shades of gray, black, and more black, and remarks, "Nice color," when she pulls out Peter's red hoodie, as out of place in her clothes as an exclamation point in a eulogy.

"Yeah, I hear they're calling it _red_ and it's gonna change the world."

Behind her, he sighs. She will not apologize. When she finally turns around to ask if he's going to keep staring at her like a creep, he's already gone back downstairs. Great. Good. Exactly what she wanted.

Day three after the move, she's long since finished putting away her few things and is chilling in her jammies and favorite red hoodie, and Peter texts her to see how everything went. He really needs to stop showing so much concerned interest in her, it's going to give her a complex. Or just compel her to tell him about her big ugly feelings, which, just...no. 

She texts him back immediately, then drops onto the bed. 

First of all on the list of reasons she cannot date Peter Parker: because she's fifteen years old and these feelings are very likely nothing more than a surge of pubescent hormones—even if they have stubbornly stuck around for two years with no end in sight—and definitely not worth giving herself up to the vulnerability because it'll only lead to pain. 

He wants to see what her new room looks like. "What a freak," she says softly, smiling to herself as she texts back.

Second of all: _he's freaking Spider-Man_. He spends his weeknights after school rescuing little old ladies from trees and helping cats cross the street or something, and on big days he goes toe-to-toe with Captain America. He _saves lives_. He probably has a lot more on his plate to worry about than dating. Not only would she be a distraction, but a risk. Peter Parker takes it hard when he accidentally steps on a bug; if his secret identity got out and someone tried to get to him through MJ? It'd literally kill him. His good heroic bleeding heart would explode and he would die, whether he felt the same gushy soul-crushing feelings as her or not.

She downloads Snapchat. Freaking _Snapchat_.

Which brings her to third of all: he probably doesn't like her as much as she likes him. Even if he almost tried to kiss her. Even if he let her—ugh, god, it's embarrassing just to remember—cry on him at Flash's party. And when she and Mom fought. That's two times more than she's ever planned on crying in front of anyone since she was a toddler; if there's a third time she'll probably have to kill him.

"Okay, so first of all," she says as she records a video, and knows she's almost definitely going to fail this venture of keeping her gooey awful feelings a secret. But maybe that's okay, as long as it doesn't interfere with his superheroing. And if it does, she'll be the bigger person and just break up with him. Easy peasy.

After another half hour exchanging Snapchats like an idiot, like a _stupid idiot_ , MJ forces herself to go to bed and buries herself under her new comforter, shivering with adrenaline. She actually kind of loves Snapchat, which was secretly her biggest concern when refusing to download the app ever since it was invented, and she now has a small stockpile of screencaptures of Peter Parker with puppy ears and a gross long tongue, oh my god. 

"You sleep okay?" Dad asks the next morning at breakfast, apparently noticing her lethargy and the bags under her eyes. You know, like noticing that water gets things wet? 

She shoves her food around her plate and shrugs before shifting gears to help Tabby with her tiny baby-sized pancake pieces. "Fine, just weird sleeping in a new bed. Yo, Tabs, over here, girl, cut that out." Pulling Tabby's sticky little hand from her mouth, MJ replaces the fingers with pancake, making the little smacking noises with her mouth that always make Tabby laugh.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to relax around her dad, but—well, okay, maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she feels paranoid, because it’s only been a few days and there’s still so much time for everything to go wrong. He could fall off the wagon tomorrow, or next week, or next year, and she can’t calm down until it just happens, because if she’s calm and happy and not expecting it then it’ll only be worse when it _does_ happen. And it will.

So she’s determined to keep up the bad attitude thing, whatever, she’s fifteen, it’s basically a tenet of adolescence to be contrary for the sake of it. At least she has a good reason besides just hormones. 

“Okay, so, shopping!” Mom says sometime after her fourth cup of coffee. “Where should we start, with house things? Though that’ll take up more space. Maybe clothes for the kids first?” She looks at Dad as if his opinion actually means anything, and all of a sudden MJ realizes that the balance of power she had with Mom for the last two years is gone. She’s the _kid_ again, Mom’s looking to _him_ for support and advice and that’s just. That’s going to take some getting used to.

“We’re going to Barnes and Noble, too, right?” she interrupts them mid-conversation _vis a vis_ bath towel color schemes. “Mom promised we’d go book shopping.”

“And we will,” Dad says, but he’s looking cagey. “We will, Michelle—MJ?” he looks at Mom, pained.

“MJ,” Mom nods.

_“Michelle_ ,” MJ posits, clutching her orange juice with lethal force.

They all take a breath. Tabby whispers " _SeeSee_ ," which is the closest she can get to either one of MJ’s names. None of this is her fault and she’s perfect.

“Michelle,” Dad says, with an air of forced patience that makes her blood boil. “I am going to take you book shopping, but I don’t think it can be today. There’s so much to get and only so much room in the car, we have to prioritize, and books are, I’m sorry, pretty low on the list of most important things in a new house.”

She’s incapable of speech. Both because she’s pissed and because he’s technically right. “They are to _me_ ,” she means to say decisively and without room for argument. Instead, the weight of the last two weeks that’s been stacking up and up and up onto her shoulders—the sleepless nights, the frenzied sorting and packing, the worrying and wondering and waiting for everything to blow up and go wrong—it crushes her, just a little, and her voice barely comes out at all.

Dad looks like he’s going to cry; Mom looks exhausted. He clears his throat carefully before talking. “If you’re sure you want to wait to get new clothes—“

“I _am_ ,” she says instantly, shocked by how easy that just was. She hadn’t even tried to sound upset to get her way, she was going to cave, only he caved first. It’s kind of plain to see how some girls can become spoiled by exploiting this ability, and she vows not to be that girl. Even if she totally could.

“—we can drop you at Barnes and Noble while we get Tabby’s stuff,” he finishes, smiling wider the more her back straightens with hope. “Try to limit yourself to paperbacks, though, okay?”

“Once we come to get you that’s _it_ for browsing, Michelle, we are not spending all day waiting on you,” Mom adds hastily, sensing Dad’s vulnerability and covering it up with the backbone she’s grown during the separation. 

Leaning very seriously forward onto the table (getting his elbow in a pool of syrupy drool Tabby left there for him), Dad angles his head to meet her eye. “Are those terms agreeable?” he asks gravely. His eyes are, like, creepily blue when he’s being earnest and it’s really doing a number on her ability to hold firm against parental tyranny. But she appreciates that he’s treating this like the negotiation it truly is, so she extends her hand for a handshake.

“Deal,” she says, and they shake on it.

For the next two weeks, MJ waits for everything to go wrong. Waits to find a liquor bottle in some weird little hiding spot, for Dad’s breath to start smelling like nail polish remover, waits for Mom to get sullen and quiet. 

She pretends to be reading but watches Dad get acquainted with Tabby, sitting with her on the living room floor saying _Daddy loves you, Tabitha, Daddy loves you, that’s right, I love you very much_ over and over again. He’s swapped out his coping mechanisms, now, allegedly. Whenever he has a hard day at work or feels stressed out by the endless stream of awfulness on the news, he vanishes into the bedroom and returns in workout gear and goes for a run around the neighborhood. Every time he comes back red-faced and sweating she makes a point to get close enough to determine he didn’t jog to the nearest bar, and he undeniably stinks, but never of booze.

And she snapchats Peter. Which is weird and seems wrong but he’s genuinely interested in what goes on in her life. No one else has her username and she would delete their friend requests even if they did, for the same reason she only uses Facebook to share protest locations and times or news articles from reputable sources. The people at school don’t really care about what she had for breakfast; they want her likes and comments on their own lives to make them feel real. 

When Peter replies to her snaps with his face replaced by the hearteyes emoji or the whole screen full of sunglasses smiles or a message saying _you’re the funniest person I know and it’s really not fair_ , she feels realer than real. Like they’re keeping a secret.

“Knock, knock!” Dad hollers as he comes up the stairs, because there’s no door and thus nothing to physically knock on. He pauses at the top to look around at the mural she’s painted on the ceiling above her bed. “You know, I’m not sure this is what the landlord meant by _feel free to repaint_ , but I like it. Looks really nice.”

It’s nothing totally special, just a close-up portion of the New York skyline, but she did take the time to kind of Carmen Sandiego all of the New York-based superheroes in their costumes’ base colors onto rooftops and fire escapes. Jessica Jones is purple, Captain America is blue, the Hulk is green, Black Widow is the suggestion of a shadow with a dot of orange hair, and Spider-Man gets red because Iron Man sucks and was based out of California pre-Avengers anyway. “It killed an afternoon,” she shrugs.

He sits down on her desk chair, smiling around at the signs of habitation. “I can hear you laughing sometimes, from the living room,” he says softly, touching the sweater she left draped over the back of the chair. “Not something I’d heard in a while. I missed it.”

She doesn’t know what to say or do with him staring at her like this, so she stares at her phone instead. Her lockscreen is a Snapchat Peter sent her last week of him and Ned at the science museum. They’re posing with a spacesuit from one of the Apollo missions and look like they’re about to pee themselves with nerdy glee. It’s her favorite picture of them. 

“Michelle, honey, can you look at me, please?”

Lifting her gaze is like lifting barbells; it takes effort. When she manages it, putting her phone face-down on the cover of the book she’d lost track of texting Peter, she sees Dad watching her, his hands clenched on his knees. “What?”

He swallows visibly. “There are some things I’ve been wanting to say to you since—well, for about two years,” he says with a cynical huff of laughter, looking down at his own white knuckles for a moment. Then he looks up again, and his eyes are red with emotion. “I’m just... _really fucking sorry_ , Michelle. There’s no excuse for the way I behaved. You and Mom and-and Tabby deserve better. I know that.”

“Kind of an obvious thing to own up to, but okay,” she shrugs. “You don’t get any points for knowing that being a shitty person is bad.”

“I—yeah, I know,” he stammers and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not trying to...I don’t want an easy out, that’s not what I’m doing. I just-just wanted you to know that I’m. That you, and Mom, and Tabby, you’re...you’re all _so much more important_ to me than any of the things I did back then, okay? And I’m not going to. I. I’ll do _anything_ not to lose you again. Which is why I just...I wanted you to-to hold onto this for me.”

One of the hands on his knees detaches, and he holds out a six-month AA chip to her. After a second he must realize that the bed is too far for her to reach it, because he gets up and gingerly sits down on the edge of the bed beside her.

“I thought you needed that,” she says, staring at the little blue disk with suspicion. 

“Well, they don’t dock points if you lose it,” Dad explains. He takes her hand in his—it’s big and warm and calloused and exactly how she remembers it feeling when he would walk her to school—and presses the chip into her palm, folding her fingers around it and enclosing her fist between both his hands. “It’s a reminder that I’m stronger than my addiction, and that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as I have something to hold onto. And I want you to have it, Michelle, because...because I want it to be a promise to _you_ , too. That if I ever have to ask for it back, it’ll be to give you a new one. I am _committed._ I don’t ever want to disappoint you or scare you or-or push you away again. If things get bad like last time, I’ll be the one to walk away. You won’t have to uproot your life for my mistakes again. Okay, honey?”

Her hand is sweating inside both of his, her breaths coming short and uneven. She can’t stop looking at him, wishing she could believe any of it as easily as he wants her to. And she does want to believe him. She wants to have a dad again.

“You know I’m not going to be all rainbows and sunshine overnight about this, right?” she finally asks, unable to look at his seriously sad eyes another second without giving herself away. “That’s—you have to earn that.” Because she’s not a heartless monster, though, she puts the chip on her nightstand. “...pretty good start, I guess...”

“I know it’ll take time. That’s okay, Michelle.” His smile is so big and happy and hopeful that she can only stand to look for a second. Then he pulls her in for a crushing hug and, like, a million kisses to the top of her head until she groans at him to _stop please you’re getting drool in my hair_ at which point he acts like he’s going to _lick her head_ because he’s _disgusting_ and she screams and laughs and feels okay about letting go of her worry for a few minutes.

The next morning they go for her first Saturday jog together through the neighborhood, and she can’t resist making a video to send to Peter, because it’s an agonizing experience even if she does have slightly more stamina than she believed. Dad laughs at her and buys her a venti latte to make up for it, so he’s not all bad after all.

Even if it _is_ evil to make her jog.

**Peter:** but seriously is it ok??? u good???

Before dinner, Dad and Tabby are cuddling on the couch having an animated (if one-sided) conversation about the merits of Ford versus Toyota. Michelle sits so that Tabby is sandwiched between them and makes them pose for a _cheese_ —Tabby’s word for picture—with her, and sends the picture to Peter. Because yeah. Yeah, she’s good.

From pretty much the moment they moved into the house, Mom and Dad have been talking about going on a family trip so they can bond through having wholesome fun together. And MJ rolled her eyes skyward. But now that things have settled down and Dad is back at work trying to give his supervisors some confidence in him, he and Mom have calmed down a little bit. From two weeks in Europe to four days camping to _uh…how about we do a day at Coney Island?_ Which seems much more palatable.

“Can I invite a friend?” she asks while they eat dinner, now that the decision is finally made and Dad’s vacation day is approved. 

Mom gives her the kind of shrewd look that says _I know exactly who you’re talking about_ , but doesn’t say anything. Dad, however, asks: “Oh, is that the friend you’re always chat-snapping? I was wondering when I’d get to meet her.”

That just makes Mom laugh. Like, a lot. MJ does not approve.

“It’s pretty heteronormative of you to assume that I can only be close friends with girls,” she replies, idly turning the page of _Would Everybody Please Stop: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas_ while moving her tea out of Tabby’s reach. “So can I invite Peter or what? You said you want us to all have a nice time, and honestly, you can’t expect me to have a nice time with only old people or a toddler to hang out with. Unless you really just want me there to babysit while you two, like…canoodle on the Tilt O’ Whirl, or something.”

Because, yeah. That’s a thing. That’s been an _ongoing_ thing since the _second_ they got back together. The hours-long phone conversations transitioned seamlessly into going out every other night for dinner or dancing after dinner or just on long, long walks, with MJ acting as a captive volunteer for babysitting Tabby. She doesn’t mind hanging out with her little sister, obviously, but ugh, ew, she has no interest in knowing what they get up to.

It’ll probably cool down soon. Hopefully. And then they’ll just be normal parental amounts of gross and annoying. “So?” she asks, because they're looking at each other with very intimate _Oh, our whimsical daughter_ eyes instead of acknowledging her.

“Michelle, you’ve been in love with that boy for two years,” Mom points out, making Dad splutter and get water on himself. “You plan on telling him before or after he meets us? Or at all?”

“Wait, hang on, _what?_ ”

Okay, wow, way to call her out in the middle of dinner in front of God and everybody. “I don’t know, _Mother_ ,” she says slowly and viciously because she’s dying from embarrassment and the delighted look on Dad’s face, “maybe we’ll have such a _very nice time_ that I’m overwhelmed by the romantic atmosphere and tell him on the ferris wheel, but how’ll I ever possibly find the _courage_ to reveal my _true heart_ if you don’t let him come? I’ll just die, Mother, _I’ll die of heartbreak!_ ”

Dropping the fork onto her plate with a clatter and sighed “ _Psh!_ ” she drops the act and carries her dishes to the sink. Whatever, so she won’t invite Peter, she’ll just bring a book and eat a million hotdogs and—

“I think he should come,” Dad pipes up from behind his water glass. “Michelle’s right, she needs someone her own age to spend time with, especially after two weeks with us.”

She almost drops her fresh mug of tea right onto the floor. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Dad grins, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “Why not? I would love to meet your good, good friend Peter. I would love that _so_ much. I have so many questions to ask him. So many. Just…just _so many questions_.”

Okay, maybe this is a bad idea after all. “Actually, never mind,” she says.

“Nope! Call him up, he’s coming!”

“Oh my god!” Running up the stairs, she’s chased by Dad’s absolutely maniacal laughter.

* * *

 

So here they are.

Peter looks around the foyer with exaggerated interest. “Wow, this is really nice!” he says with so much sweetness that MJ almost doesn’t shove him. 

But, I mean, she _does_. “Try not to pass out,” she advises him, leaning around the dividing wall to see how breakfast is coming. It is way too early to handle Peter being cute and she has a coffee clutched to her chest for fortitude. “You want coffee or the tour first?”

“Coffee, please,” he replies immediately. “Wait, so—are your parents…?”

“Dad’s making waffles, so, get ready for that,” she says, and nods him toward the kitchen before leading the way. “And heeeeere’s Tabby!” So sue her, she can’t help doing a peppy voice with those big baby browns looking at her as she scoops her sister from the booster seat onto her hip. “Tabby, meet Peter. He’s a loser, but don’t hold it against him.”

If anything, Peter’s big stupid kawaii anime eyes just get bigger, and he smiles at Tabby, and he reaches out like he wants to shake her hand or something equally lame. “Hi, Tabby!” he breathes out like she’s the most spectacular little human he’s ever seen, which, MJ can sympathize. “I’ve seen so many pictures of you, it is so cool to finally meet you! I like your braids, they’re really pretty.” He keeps talking as MJ deposits an enraptured Tabby into his arms so she can get his coffee.

Dad’s wrestling with the waffle maker, which, she has no idea why he doesn’t just make pancakes if it’s such a production, but whatever. “Peter’s here,” she says lightly.

He makes an interested _Mm!_ noise in his throat and waggles his eyebrows at her. Unacceptable. “Should I go out there?” he asks conspiratorially, and laughs when she almost yells that he _absolutely should not_ before fleeing the kitchen.

“H-hello Mister Jones!” Peter calls as MJ ushers him and, as an extension, Tabby, up to her bedroom. “It’s nice to meet you! You have a— _MJ, stop pushing, I’m holding your sister!_ —you have a really nice house! Sir! Thank you for having me!”

“Oh my god, you have stated _enough_ generic pleasantries,” she groans, pushing both hands into the small of his back to make him climb faster. 

Once they’re upstairs she releases him, and puts up a baby gate so Tabby doesn’t fall down the stairs. “So, this is where the magic happens,” she announces. Peter puts Tabby on the bed, still totally enchanted with her but also looking around with interest at the decorations she’s put up since the last time he’s seen a picture of her room. “You excited for our fun-filled day of lackluster amusements?”

She looks up and he’s just. Staring at her. With his kawaii anime eyes and a doofy smile. “Really, really excited,” he says as he helps Tabby get down to toddle. “Are _you_ excited to see me eat an entire funnel cake in under three minutes?”

“Ew, excited is _not_ the word I would use.”

They laugh, which is fine and normal. Then they stop laughing and go quiet, which is neither fine nor normal. Talking with Peter is supposed to be the easy part; it has been for the last four months, so what's changed? Now she wants to say something but it gets stuck in her throat, she wonders if he'll care, if he'll laugh, she hears Mom's voice in her head asking _You plan on telling him before or after he meets us? Or at all?_ and that is just not okay. She is an awkward person because she chooses to be, not because she actually _cares_.

Peter glances at her from the corner of his eye. She notices. She is very observant. Tabby has crawled off the bed and is wandering around the room making fart noises with her mouth, occasionally mumbling "SeeSee book, SeeSee _big_ book," to herself as she pokes the many spines filling the bookshelves.

"H-hey MJ?" Peter asks meekly. "Why did you invite me to come today?"

They both stare straight ahead at her wall of bookshelves instead of at each other, which is good, because suddenly she's forgotten how to breathe and her face is red and _he should already know this he's the one who texted that it's a date!_ "You know why," she says, hating how her voice sounds in her own ears. 

And she makes a move. A tiny one, but one that requires Herculean effort as she drags her hand the few inches across her bedspread to brush against his. He sucks in a breath. "MJ, wait, I—"

She feels something, like a callous or eczema but worse, and they both jerk away from each other as she looks down in alarm. "What is _that?_ "

"Don't freak out!"

" _That is the worst way to make me not freak out!_ "

He makes a frantic shushing noise and puts a hand over her mouth, because, oh, yeah, her voice is getting shrill and if Dad can hear her _laugh_ from the living room sometimes he could almost definitely misinterpret her shrieking _What is that?!_ without context. At least his hand feels normal now; she must have touched something else when she wasn't looking. "It's just—I'm just wearing the suit under my clothes," he says calmly but with his eyes bugging out with barely restrained panic. "I always wear it when I go out in public, in case of an emergency. I just, I had the glove shoved up under my sleeve and it slipped out a little, I guess, and that's, uh. That's what you. Uh."

There's still a hand on her face, which is annoying, so she bites him.

"Ow!" he yelps and pulls back his hand like she's just burned him with a hot poker, looking emotionally wounded. "MJ!"

"That is literally the stupidest rig I've ever seen if _sitting down_ makes your glove fall out," she hisses, yanking his hoodie sleeve up to shove it more securely into the band of his web shooter.

"Tabby was pulling on my sleeve!" Peter says.

"Tabby!" says Tabby gleefully.

MJ rolls her eyes and scoops Tabby up onto her lap. "Don't blame the baby for a bad vigilante disguise, it's so gouache. Is it all good now? Wave your arms like you're on the Cyclone."

He obediently does just that, which gives her a hot second to get her rapid pulse under control, because holy shit. Some stupid idiot (her) just almost tried to make a move on a dumb loser (him) and it would have been the biggest mistake of her entire life, literally made into a living metaphor by his vigilante glove falling out of his sleeve and coming between them. Holy shit, she's so stupid. She's so, so stupid.

"Okay, stop," she snaps when he keeps waving his arms around. "It should be fine. Come on, we should go down, it's probably time to eat soon."

Before she can get to the top of the stairs, a hand comes down on her shoulder and gently tugs her back to stop. She doesn't turn around and he doesn't force the issue. "MJ, I don't plan on ditching you today," he says softly. "I promise, I really don't. Like, the last thing I want to do today is _not_ hang out with you. It's just that I...I have a _responsibility_ as Spider-Man, and that means I have to be prepared for anything."

This boy with his hand on her shoulder isn't even sixteen yet, MJ thinks with a sweeping rush of bitterness. He shouldn't have to carry this responsibility alone, and she isn't sure she's the person to help him carry it. He needs the Avengers at his back but they've fucked off upstate, and the Defenders are all way too hyper-focused on Hell's Kitchen to be any help in Queens.

He can't be the only hero they have before he's even old enough to drive on his own.

"Okay," she nods, and puts on some kinds of normal face before leading the way downstairs. Peter's hand vanishes from her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask me why I came to this conclusion, but I very vividly imagine Alan Tudyk as MJ's dad.


	5. Chapter 5

 

MJ's mom isn't exactly _waiting_ at the bottom of the stairs for them to come down, but she _is_ taking a _really_ long time adjusting picture frames on a shelf _close_ to the bottom of the stairs, and looks up in mild-mannered surprise at their descent. "I can't believe Peter Parker's finally in my house," she smiles, forgoing Peter's politely extended handshake and going straight for a hug, which is awesome. She's clearly just woken up and gotten dressed in the last, like, five minutes; she's warm and smells like a mom should smell and has a really nice smile as she pats his cheek and welcomes him to her home.

"Thank you, Mrs Jones," he replies, a little breathless. "Your house is really, really nice, I'm so glad you invited me to—"

" _Again?_ " sighs MJ as she passes them to settle Tabby in her high chair at the kitchen table. 

"—but what'd you mean finally?" asks Peter, confused by her phrasing. He and MJ have only really been friends since, like, winter. Sure, it's summer now, but it hasn't been that long.

Mrs Jones gives MJ a weird look (if he knew her better he would recognize it as a mixture of amusement and warning) that makes MJ roll her eyes and shrug, which, okay, is even more confusing. "MJ hasn't invited any of her friends to see the new house yet," Mrs Jones explains, ushering him to the kitchen. "Have a seat—right there next to MJ's fine—and Dad and I will have food out in a second."

Their shoulders brush as they sit down. MJ stiffens but doesn't pull away, which he considers a sign that maybe today can still be okay. Maybe he should take off the suit, stash it in her room before they go. But what happens if there's an emergency? He can't just not help, so then he would expose his secret identity to the entire surrounding population and their phone cameras. And it's summer, there wouldn't be anyone with a handy scarf that he can use as a makeshift mask like Daredevil does when he's off the clock and duty calls. So maybe skip the suit, but bring his mask and shooters in his pockets? But what if they went on a ride and he dropped them? Or what if there was an explosion and he needed the heat protection of the whole suit? What if—?

"Hey," MJ whispers, nudging his knee with hers under the table. "Why're you freaking out?"

Is he freaking out? He puts a hand on his chest and makes two observations: his hand is shaking and his heart is racing. Okay, so. Freaking out. "I have to bring the suit," he whispers back between deep breaths.

"Okay, I never said you couldn't—"

" _But I don't want to put you second, either!_ " he interrupts her, and his hand must have grown its own brain or something in the last few seconds because it's reaching for MJ's and holding it so tight and _he did not give it permission to do that at all_. But she returns his grip and looks into his face and he knows she understands what he means, even if she doesn't say anything.

Then her parents come in, and they quickly let go to hide their hands and burning eyes.

Mister Jones sounds suspicious as he says, "Good morning, children," and puts a big plate of waffles on the table. "Half have chocolate chips, they're Michelle's favorite."

"Okay, but I haven't _asked_ for them since I was _five_ ," MJ points out, irritably stabbing a pair of the chocolate chip waffles on her fork.

"Still your favorite," Mister Jones grins, then turns his inscrutable blue gaze onto Peter, and his smile softens into a less teasing and more genuinely kind expression. "Nice to meet you, son. I haven't heard much about you, but it seems like Michelle's a _big_ fan."

He ignores how MJ slowly starts to sink lower in her chair in favor of meeting Mister Jones’s gaze headlong. “I’m a big fan of hers, too, sir,” he says in his best _parents-love-me_ voice and helps himself to a plain waffle. So there's more for her. “MJ’s the best academic decathlon captain ever.” He figures saying just one good thing might seem less creepy than his entire laundry list of stuff he thinks is great about MJ, like her hair and eyes and art skills and impeccable sense of humor and general blinding intellect, and puts a lid on himself.

It seems to win a few points with MJ's mom, at least. "Mister Harrington was _very_ complimentary at the end-of-year conferences," she agrees. MJ looks like she's going to die.

"We can all agree that I'm amazing, but maybe move on?" she asks desolately. "Please?"

Chuckling to himself while cutting a waffle into bite-sized pieces for Tabby, Mister Jones takes pity on his daughter and looks at Peter again. "College plans?" he asks indicatively.

"Uh, MIT, hopefully!"

"Really?" Mister Jones asks, eyebrows raised. He almost looks pleasantly surprised. "Right across the river from Harvard. Isn't that where you want to go, Michelle?" She does not dignify that with a response. Probably because even Peter's known since Freshman year that MJ's been aiming for Harvard, and she wasn't even talking to him then. "What're you thinking about studying, Peter?"

"Dad, we're fifteen, that's a totally unfair line of questioning and you know it," MJ interrupts, and even though Peter's pretty sure he does know what field he wants to go into, he's grateful for the intervention. "It's already unrealistic to expect high schoolers to know what they want to do with _the rest of their lives_ at _seventeen_."

Mister Jones concedes to that point (because it's a good point, and if anyone should know about taking on a lot of responsibility at fifteen, it's Peter Parker) and turns conversation back around to milder waters. He tells Peter to call him _Robert_ , which makes Peter think maybe he passed some kind of parental test he's pretty sure he was taking but didn't want to think too hard about. Mrs Jones— _Celine_ , she says to call her—keeps making Peter take more food, which he thinks means she likes him, and he's secretly glad either way because he has to eat a lot to keep up with his super-metabolism, and it's usually hard to come up with a good excuse besides _Sorry, I'm a bottomless pit-monster_.

According to Google Maps, Coney Island is only a 45-minute drive from Michelle's house. So when they manage to get there in just a hair's breadth under two hours and minutes before opening they consider it a win, especially because it was a pretty small car, and sharing the backseat with Tabby's carseat left MJ half in his lap the entire time. They don't talk about it as they stretch their legs in the parking lot.

“Mommy needs more coffee,” Celine announces, pushing Tabby’s stroller toward a coffee cart with a single-minded determination that reminds Peter so much of MJ he has to swallow a laugh. MJ looks at him from the corner of her eye, realizes she’s also going in for the kill on the cart, and finally cracks a smile. 

After that, like flipping a switch, everything’s just...easy. They have their coffees while standing in line for tickets and she deliberately steps on his foot just to watch him turn red. Robert insists on getting their ride tickets for them no matter how many times Peter asks if he's sure. Actually, what Robert does is look Peter dead in the eye and says: “Let me be Dad today, kid, alright? I’m trying to spoil my daughter a little and that unfortunately extends to guests,” in a kind of fond exasperation that makes MJ snort.

“Meet at Nathan’s at two for lunch!” Robert calls as, tickets in hand, MJ drags him by the arm into the thick of Luna Park. “Keep your phone on! Behave yourselves!”

Once they’re out of parental vision or earshot, Peter can’t help sagging with relief. He didn’t even notice how tense he was throughout breakfast and the car ride, he was so busy putting his best face on for MJ’s parents.

She punches his arm to make him look up at her. “Relax, they love you,” she says. “Or—Mom loves you, anyway. Dad still kind of thinks I’m twelve, so.” She shrugs. “No winning, there.”

“ _Thanks_ ,” he replies, laying the sarcasm on thick. “Whatever. I thought you said your dad wanted to, like, bond and stuff, though? How come we split up?” She’s already started scoping out rides; he picks up the pace to keep up with her longer legs.

“Because he and Mom want alone time, obviously,”

"Really? At an amusement park?" he asks, trying to summon up romantic visions of reconnection among the smelly masses of tourists and screaming kids (one of which _belongs_ to you, even) and failing to find much romantic about it. Not to mention the last time he was here, he almost died fighting Liz's dad, and then Liz's dad almost died. And they almost set the whole amusement park on fire.

Then MJ forcefully loops her arm through his, and, okay. He sees the appeal. "They had their first date on the boardwalk," she explains, pointing back where they came to where the surge of humanity is thickest. "They spent almost five hours just watching tourists and eating junk food. They were sixteen."

He was craning his neck to try and see the spot she was indicating, but whirls back around to look at her now. "For real?" he asks, feeling a smile creep across his face.

"Mhm," MJ hums with a nod. "They dated on an off for a few years before actually getting serious, I guess." Then she stills, and smiles ruefully to herself. "Then went off and back on _again_ twenty years later."

"Good point."

For a few moments she doesn't say anything, just looks over the crowds with the sun shining on her face and a breeze ruffling the curls floating around her face. Peter can't stop staring at her. Then she looks directly at him and quirks her eyebrows. "Let's go to the museum!" she says, and drags him happily away.

As they shove through crowds to get to the attractions, Peter muses on the fact that he really enjoys MJ bossing him around. It might be a weird pervert thing that he'll discover about himself whenever he gets around to being sexually active with a—okay, maybe shouldn't think about that in public while able to smell MJ's hair—or maybe it's just because he can tell it's MJ's way of showing affection. She doesn't ask for the things she wants, he's learned in the last two years, because if she asks she can be refused. If she demands something, she gets it, usually in the form of participation at decathlon practice, borrowed pens, and respect. He wants to give it all to her and more.

So they walk through the Coney Island museum, and then they go on the carousel (Peter's idea), and then they go on the Cyclone (MJ's idea), zigzag the park toward whatever amusement attracts their attention next, and then collapse onto the first bench that becomes available, breathless and grinning.

"Is that what it feels like?" MJ asks with a nod toward the Cyclone. "When you swing around?"

Peter takes his time thinking about it, because this is the first time MJ's asked him about being Spider-Man alone and without sounding like she's accusing him of something. "Kind of," he says slowly, "but...different. Because you aren't sitting down, you're just kind of...kind of flinging yourself through the air." He squints up at the Cyclone, trying to compare the feeling of freedom without limitations with the coaster's tracks, and it makes him brave enough to start tracing the circles in his mind's eye on the back of MJ's hand. "...but you know where you're going and where to shoot the next web, because your senses are all super heightened and you just—your lizard-brain works like a million steps ahead of your regular brain now. You don't think about it, really, just kind of fall."

"Whereas people actually _pay_ _money_ to potentially fling themselves through the air here, and that _isn't_ the desired effect," MJ fills in helpfully.

He laughs and flattens his hand on top of hers. "Yeah, exactly. You should—sometime, during the summer, I'll find a quiet place and show you how to use the web shooters. If you want."

Her eyebrows do something he's never seen before and doesn't think he could ever duplicate, something delicate and surprised and intrigued all at once. "Uh, _yes_ , I _do_ want to learn how to swing from building to building and thwip assholes, is that even a _question?_ " she says incredulously, and he can't fight back a grin.

"Cool," he nods, stomach doing backflips that have nothing to do with roller coasters. "I'll, uh, I'll let you know when I find somewhere we won't get caught."

They're fifteen minutes late to meet for lunch (because Peter just has to do good on his nasty promise to make MJ watch him consume a funnel cake in record time; it makes her scream in horrified delight and doesn't even ruin his appetite, win-win), but when they screech to a halt at the end of the long line, Robert and Celine are only just rolling up themselves with Tabby in her stroller. They act like they've been waiting and give MJ's parents a hard time about how hungry they are. Peter lets Robert buy him two chili dogs, then plans to get himself two more later. MJ delicately tears apart a plate of chicken wings, Celine indulges in bacon cheese fries, Tabby's got Cheerios and fruit, and Robert pretends he's being just a little bit healthier with fish and chips, because there's fish in it. It's an awesome time.

"Well, now your breath smells like _chili_ ," MJ says disapprovingly as they all walk the boardwalk together. They're in front taking a turn pushing Tabby around, Robert and Celine trailing behind.

He forces a laugh even though his mind is fully occupied with Kill Bill sirens again, accompanied by a tiny voice frantically asking _Why does she care what my breath smells like? Does she want to kiss later? Did I bring gum? With her parents here?! I didn't bring gum!_ "Well, you... _you_ smell like buffalo sauce," he points out, striving to still look like an intelligent human person.

She elbows him. "Not the point."

Then what _is_ the point?!

There's barely any room to think or breathe or talk, the balmy weather bringing everyone out in full force and choking the boardwalk with crowds. Peter can't help hovering a little ahead of their small group, to keep an eye on Tabby and make sure no one knocks into her stroller. She whined all through lunch and is dead asleep now, despite the noise.

They go back to Luna park after the walk, because _games_. Peter hangs back for a while, letting MJ and her parents hang out, just watching. Well, his other reason is because he gets too excited and might accidentally Spider-Man the game. That’s probably cheating.

He can’t, however, resist ducking aside to play the bottle-and-rings game to try and win something for Tabby. That’s got to get him some huge parent-points, right? So he makes it look like a lot of effort to effortlessly toss the ring at the perfect trajectory to land on the neck of the bottle, three times, and gets a teddy bear in return, and turns around to find Robert watching shrewdly. “That for me?” he asks so seriously Peter can’t tell if he’s kidding or not. So that’s where MJ gets that from, noted.

“Well, it was supposed to be for Tabby,” Peter admits. Then, because he’s stupid, he blurts: “But-but you can have it if you want instead!”

Robert’s face is expressionless for a moment, and then he laughs so hard Peter’s pretty sure he almost dies. He grabs Peter by the scruff of the neck and draws him off to the side, though MJ and Celine don’t notice while they’re busy whacking moles. “You don’t want to give it to Michelle?” he asks, clearly leading him somewhere with this question.

“I think if I tried to give MJ a teddy bear she would punch me,” Peter shrugs, adding a hasty, “sir,” for good measure. Then he realizes he just said something that could be construed as _really rude_ about the man’s _daughter_ and feels himself go pale. “Not that she isn’t—I mean, MJ’s really—she’s just kind of...the best, scariest person I’ve ever met? If that makes any sense? Sir?”

He’s going to die. He kinda _wants_ to die. He wonders if jumping off the top of the ferris wheel will do the trick, or if his super-strength would just make him bounce? But Robert’s actually smiling and patting his shoulder.

“Yeah, she takes after her mom,” Robert says conspiratorially. “Listen, Peter. From what my wife has heard, you’re alright. Tabby can have the bear if it survives the laundry.” 

He must see Peter’s face brighten with sudden optimism, because he gets more stern. “And if you _do_ intend to be more than just Michelle’s _very good friend_...I’ve broken her heart enough to last through her college graduation. You do it before then, and I, you know, I’ll, uh...I’m threatening you, Peter, you get that, right? Not with actual _harm_ , I’ve taken an oath, but it’ll be _really_ awkward and strained. _Very_ uncomfortable.”

That startles a laugh out of Peter, even if he’s still adequately terrified. “Yes, sir, I-I completely understand,” he says quickly. “And I, uh. I, uh. It’s not that I-I _don’t_ intend to, uh. I mean, if MJ wants...well. Uh. It’s complicated, I guess. But I...I think that I would want...whatever...MJ wants. Sir. If she wants to be friends I’ll be her friend, and if she w-wants to...” he clears his throat because it’s clenching convulsively, “...then I think I’d be lucky to have her. Sir.”

Robert smiles a pained-looking smile and tightens his hand on Peter’s shoulder; if he didn’t have super strength it might almost hurt. “Good answer,” he says solemnly, and releases him.

“Peter!” he hears MJ bark three stalls away. “Win me a poop emoji pillow!”

He instinctively brightens at the sound of her voice, turning toward it heedless of Robert’s presence. “Hey, _I’m_ picking what emoji pillow you get if I’m doing all the work!” he calls back.

After losing once for show and then winning MJ her poop emoji (although he got the one with hearts for eyes) they go on the swings. It feels a lot more like swinging on his webs than the roller coaster, actually, and he makes a note to tell her about it later. Then they all take a picture in front of the baseball field before going down to the beach again to cool off. It’s crowded, and Tabby insists on getting out and walking, which adds a whole new dimension of anxiety to Peter’s life as he hops over sunbathers to keep pace with her.

“You’re such a dork,” MJ huffs as she finally catches them and swings Tabby up onto her shoulders. “You don’t have to be on-duty all the time, you know. She won’t get baby-napped with four of us watching from two feet away.”

“But what if she falls?” Peter asks. He’s never hung out with a baby before, he doesn’t know the rules!

“She picks herself up,” MJ shrugs as best she can with the baby on her shoulders. “She is a strong, independent woman. And it’s _sand_. They literally make _boxes_ of the stuff specifically for babies to play in. And—oh, god, Mom! Where’s the diaper bag? Not on my shirt, not on my shirt!” She quickly ducks down to get Tabby off her shoulders, now giving off a very distinct aroma of toddler poo.

Celine barely hides a snort of laughter at the sight of MJ’s distress, but reaches into the bag on the stroller. She says a very bad word under her breath that Peter only picks up because of his heightened senses. “We’re out! _Robert!_ ”

“Oh, _no_ , they’re in the car,” Robert says with the panicked look of a man who hasn’t had to take care of a baby since MJ was one. “I’ll take her—”

“My _god_ , Robert, I asked you to do one thing! _One thing!_ ”

“They fell out of the bag in the trunk! Should I apologize for _gravity?!_ ”

“You should apologize for not checking!”

MJ’s face turns into a wide-eyed stone edifice, and she diligently doesn’t look at Peter as her parents bicker—and it _is_ just bickering, it’s not a bad fight compared to stuff he’s heard on patrols. He takes Tabby onto his hip and squeezes her hand. She clutches it tight for a few seconds and then lets go.

“...just take her to the car, it’s _fine_ , honey,” Celine is saying, sounding frustrated but not mad enough to panic about imminent destruction. “Thank you, Peter, I’ll take her. Come here, my baby.” Heedless of the toddler’s odor, Celine gives Tabby a smacking kiss and starts off across the sand toward the boardwalk. 

Robert looks appropriately sheepish. “Stupid mistake,” he shrugs, abashed. “Sorry, guys.”

“It’s...fine,” MJ says, still barely breathing. “Let’s just hang out here until Mom gets back. I guess. God, it’s so hot. Can I have my hoodie?”

Robert reaches into the tote bag on his shoulder and unearths a red hoodie that makes Peter’s heart go pitter-patter—and a single diaper. He goes pale and looks at them; Peter can almost see the temptation to throw it into the ocean dancing in his eyes. “Please, don’t tell Mom.”

Without hesitating, MJ snatches the diaper from his grip and buries it in the sand at her feet. “Tell Mom what?” she asks breathlessly. Robert hugs her hard and grins into her hair.

Peter’s heart goes even pitter-patterier.

He and MJ sit on her hoodie—well, _his_ hoodie—in the sand; Robert sits a few meters away to appropriately self-flagellate until Celine gets back. It’s going to be a while if she has to fight the crowds and change Tabby at the car before coming back.

“Nice sweatshirt,” he says, and she punches him affectionately before leaning against his shoulder. “...you okay?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” MJ immediately replies, pulling a little book out of her actual pocket and bowing her head over it. They’re silent for a few minutes. “—I don’t want them to split up again.” Her voice should barely be audible over the crashing waves, but Peter’s listening for it.

He touches her hand but doesn’t risk much else with her dad so close. “They won’t, not over diapers,” he murmurs. “It was cool of you to look out for him like that.”

Her shoulder brushes against his. Then they just kind of...lean against each other for a little bit. They listen to the surf, and the gulls overhead, and the constant chatter of the surrounding beach goers, and he reads her book over her shoulder. 

Then he feels it.

He can’t pin it to anything specific within himself, it’s. It’s _wrongness_ , and he feels it in his gut, and it makes his head swivel around to scan the beach, the boardwalk, the amusement park for any signs of why, what, where, when. It’s out there, he knows it’s out there, MJ's saying his name but he isn't hearing it, if he can just find it then—

_Boom_. A beam of iridescent light shoots across the boardwalk and voices scream in terror as a portion of it crumbles like wet cardboard.

“MJ, take my phone,” he says, sounding a million times calmer than he feels. “If something goes really wrong, call Mister Stark. And distract your dad!”

She’s already got a hand around his phone and is shoving him behind a group of people, and as Peter yanks on his mask and runs headlong toward the fray, he sees her in his periphery, deliberately standing between him and her dad while pointing his attention toward the disaster in the making. Forget the amazing Spider-Man, _she’s_ the amazing one.

As he gets closer to the source of the destruction, stripping of his clothes as unobtrusively as possible (why, why didn’t be bring a backpack? Now he has to hope MJ grabs his pants and can get them to him after this is over without her dad noticing), he sees a humanoid-type shape, but...the guy is clearly not doing super good. Patches of his face and arms are blue like he's been deprived of oxygen, his skin looks loose and saggy despite being relatively young, and _holy shit he has a huge laser gun_. Peter dodges out of the way before another blast sends debris flying and collapses a nearby carousel. 

" _Stop, stop, stop!_ " Peter yells, bypassing the opportunity to web or possibly hurt the guy in favor of standing in front of him and trying to get his attention. Because, like—he looks _sick_ , not evil. He staggers and slows, turning a gaping, glazed look on Peter, who puts his hands up. “Hey, man, it’s okay, it’s me, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, yeah? What’s going on? We can talk about this before anyone else gets hurt.”

He’s not totally sure the guy can hear him or talk, but the laser gun thing lowers slightly. 

“There we go, buddy, that’s a good start,” he says as encouragingly as possible. “Now, just hear me out, okay? There’s a lot of people here with their kids, and, like, potential girlfriends and stuff. No one wants to hurt you, they just wanna have some fun! So if you just-just _stop now_ , I can get you help, okay? Just hand me the...the...gun...?”

Then he looks down and realizes the gun is _attached to the guy’s arm_ , and it was done recently. The skin above the gun is mottled red and black with infection, dark streaks vanishing up the arm of his shirt. Oh, shit, this just got so much more complicated.

The man works his jaw with obvious difficulty. “ _Os...born_ ,” he pants, and swings his gun-arm up to the Ferris wheel and shoots.

“ _No!_ ” Peter yells in reflex. He shoots a hasty web at the gun, but knows that he has to get to the Ferris wheel first, because it’s about to collapse like tissue paper. The base is gone, and it lands on the edge of the wheel; thanks to the engineers evacuating all the nearest rides, there hadn’t been anyone in the car crushed beneath the whole thing’s weight. Peter anchors himself on the nearest sturdy structure—nothing here is tall enough, dammit!—and propels himself closer with a yank of his arms.

Okay, just. Stabilize the wheel before it falls over, then get the civilians out of each car. With the armed guy probably still mobile. Super easy. He starts at the top, shooting webs and then securing them to the ground, darting from one side of the wheel to the other through the beams and working his way down to make a network of webs all holding the wheel and preventing it falling. It maybe takes thirty seconds. Too long.

More screams. Peter whirls and runs blind toward them. He has to immobilize Shooty McLasers or all his damage control is pointless. Where’d he go, where, _where?!_

“ _Over there!”_ a woman helpfully points. He’s making his way toward the Cyclone. Why? What’s he doing wrecking up Coney Island and talking about who Peter can only assume is the famous Norman Osborn? He never imagined the technology tycoon would have the free time or amount of funness in his body to take a day off, let alone at a Brooklyn amusement park, and Peter knows a thing or two about him, he used to be best friends with...

_Harry Osborn_. Even from this far away he recognizes the shock of black hair in a frozen car on the Cyclone. Shit, shit, shit, Shooty McLasers has beef with Norman and is going after Harry; where’s his bodyguard?!

“ _Stop, man, we can fix this!_ ” Peter yells frantically as he sprints after the single-minded gunman. “Did Osborn rip you off, steal your tech? I know a _really_ good lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen!” As he talks he shoots a web across the gun’s barrel that’s immediately dissolved by another blast. Shoot, frick, hecking dang! So he has to web the guy’s arms and probably knock him out or he’ll still be able to work the gun, since it’s attached. Oh god, oh god. 

It’s probably his fault, in the end. He’s too soft, Black Widow tells him so all the time, because, get this hot take: _he doesn’t want to kill people_. Even if they’re dangerous, even if his own life is at stake, he just _doesn’t_. But he runs in an arc, tries to circumvent Shooty’s path. He doesn’t see him for a heartbeat, shoots one, two, three webs, _Karen, help me!_ has the guy’s arms almost completely pinned to his sides, losing his balance, sprinting, sweat in his eyes, _please, please, please_ —

He doesn’t even feel when he gets hit. 

But he hears a familiar voice scream his name as he falls.


	6. Chapter 6

MJ and Dad are shoving through knots of screaming people, trying to get to Mom in the parking lot, MJ with half an eye on the fight. She’s half interested in seeing Peter fight close up, but then shit starts falling apart and people on the beach are stepping on each other and Dad decides it’s time to go.

“Wait, where’s Peter?!” he asks, wide-eyed and looking around. “He was just with you!”

“He— _bathroom_ ,” MJ stammers in a stupor. The initial explosion had been plenty distracting and she hadn’t needed to cover Peter’s escape and return as Spider-Man, but now? “I’ll call him, just go!” 

They’re almost at the parking lot, skirting around the Cyclone and only panicking a little at the fact that the guy with the laser gun is _aiming_ for that. Dad has her hand in a death-grip, practically dragging her because she can’t take her eyes away, can’t let Peter out of her sight, not when it’s this dangerous, like, he usually goes after small fry muggers and burglars, not _this_. Not _alone_. She grips Peter’s phone, unsure what constitutes as bad enough to call in the Avengers.

Then the bad enough happens. MJ thinks to herself, _who the hell is stupid enough to say a masked hero’s name out loud?_ then realizes she’s the only person here who knows it, and her throat is raw from screaming.

“What, do you see— _Michelle!”_

She twists her hand free of Dad’s grip without thinking and runs. It’s like being a salmon swimming upstream, trying to go the opposite direction as the mass evacuation, using her shoulder to butt people aside. She can’t see him, she can’t see Peter, just saw him go down from a laser to the fucking—

He’s on the ground, not moving, and it’s _bad_. Her heartbeat is so loud in her ears she can’t hear anything at all, grabs Peter’s arm and aims it at laser man and smacks it until it shoots out a web, and then another, and another, and a passing surfer fuck hits the dude over the head with his board screaming _citizen’s arrest, citizen’s arrest!_

There’s debris, wood and metal and dirt, clotting up the bloody wounds in Peter’s gut. He’s choking, she can hear him gasping, and she knows it’s, like, the first rule of First Aid not to move the injured but she drags him out of immediate eyeshot and rips the mask off his face so he can breathe. “ _Peter!_ ” she gasps.

There’s blood coming out of his mouth and his face is white as paper, but his glassy eyes lock on her. Bad, bad, bad. 

Her hands fumble with Peter’s phone, she almost drops it twice while unlocking it and yelling at the little digital helper to _Fucking call Mister Stark now!_ You’re supposed to put pressure on a wound to stop the bleeding, she knows this, but what if that pushes the debris in more and does worse damage? What does she do, _what does she do?!_

“Kid, please tell me that isn’t you lighting up every police scanner in Brooklyn,” Tony Stark says, the piece of shit gave Peter the suit in the first place fucker.

“It is, he's hurt really bad, you need to get him out of here to a hospital.”

“Who the hell is this?”

“Does it _matter?_ ” MJ snaps. “I’m his friend! He just got lasered in the gut and there’s blood, there’s a lot of blood, he can barely breathe, there’s all this— _shrapnel_...”

Then Peter starts choking again, blood spurting from his mouth, and she only listens hard enough to hear something something _phone on_ something _tracker_ something something _on my way_ because she’s trying to turn him onto his side without making it hurt worse but it doesn’t work, he _screams_ through the blood and she feels like there’s a splinter the size of Tabby’s leg in _her_ guts, too. 

“Stay awake, Peter,” MJ finally thinks to say, hands hovering uselessly over him. He gingerly reaches out and touches her leg, trying to smile, there’s blood in his teeth but she doesn’t cry. She shoves the phone into her pocket and feels for a pulse in his wrist but just ends up holding his hand, wishing she knew what she’s doing. “Just—don’t die. I will be _so mad at you_ if you die.” There. Bossing him around feels better. 

He can’t lift his head, so she pulls his head and shoulders onto her lap and just. Just holds him. Because she doesn’t know what else to do. She's taken a bunch of First-Aid classes but this is so far beyond cuts and scrapes and CPR.

“If you die I will—I will tell everyone that you’re Spider-Man. _Everyone_. The whole world will know...will know _exactly_ what you did. Every single time you saved a cat from a tree, or helped an old lady cross the street, or-or saved the city from certain doom... _they’ll all know_ it was Peter Parker. I’ll tell them all. And then I’ll sell your underwear on eBay.”

The hand on hers tightens it’s grip as he tries to laugh but instead kind of just...convulses.

Oh god, what if turning him onto his side caused more damage to his gut? But it won’t matter, not if he chokes on blood and dies anyway, oh god, oh god, oh god—

“Michelle?”

She looks up and feels the knot in her chest loosen just slightly. “ _Daddy, help me_.”

For a few seconds, all Dad does is take it in. MJ figures it’s quite the sight, his daughter sheltering Peter Parker AKA someone he only thought of as a problem in relation to dating said daughter AKA Spider-Man with her body as he bleeds out on the boardwalk. Then he kind of shakes himself, pushes back nonexistent long sleeves, and drops to his knees to put Peter on his back. “Keep his head up, like you had him before,” he says tersely, grips the shredded remains of Peter’s suit in his hands, and _rips_.

“S-s-...” Peter stammers, the hand not in MJ’s trying to touch Dad’s arm. “The...I...he-all...out...” His eyes roll up toward MJ, silently begging her to understand. But she doesn’t. It’s not like in the movies when the hero’s last words are decreed to the world and he dies with a peaceful sigh; _she doesn’t know what he needs_. She leans down close over him. Blood spatters on her cheek as he tries to clear his airway before speaking again. 

“ _Take...it out...I'll heal_.”

“You'll heal,” she repeats breathlessly, putting it together. “If you get it all out he can heal, he heals fast, I think the debris is stopping it happening.”

He grins a macabre grin and jerks a nod. The effort leaves him pale and clammy despite the heat. MJ’s afraid to look at what Dad’s doing, but every few seconds Peter’s grimacing or gasping again. It feel like it’s taking years, that Iron Man won’t find him in time, that he’ll die looking at her and she never even told him she likes him because she’s so _stupid_.

The sound of helicopter rotors gradually comes to the forefront of her hearing, and MJ picks up her head to see an actual Avengers medical helicopter making a landing on the boardwalk and sending sand flying everywhere. Two paramedics jump out and make a beeline for them with a stretcher. Dad looks relieved to get out of their way; MJ finally looks down and sees globules of bloody splinters on the ground where Peter lay. 

He tries to sit up and help them move him, because of course he does, but MJ’s still close enough to catch him when he writhes in pain and falls back.

“Sorry,” he coughs, barely audible over the helicopter's noise, then looks up at her again. She thinks some of the glossiness is gone from his gaze and wonders if she was right, if some of the damage is already repairing itself, or if maybe it _is_ kind of like the movies and he’s getting that last burst of clarity and strength before— _god, MJ stop!_ “MJ. Tell May. T-tell May I’m...I...”

She gets not-unkindly pushed aside by one of the paramedics as they bodily hoist Peter onto the stretcher. “I will, and she's gonna kick your ass for it,” she promises Peter, but then turns to one of the medics. “Can someone stay with him?” She’s definitely seen _that_ on TV.

“ _Just get in, we gotta go_ ,” the other medic says. They put the gurney up on its legs and start pushing it toward the helicopter.

Looking around, it takes her a second to find Dad where he’s gone to stay out of the way. He meets her eyes and looks for a brief moment like he's going to tell her no, that she has to come home with him and Mom and Tabby and forget this ever happened. Then his gaze flickers to the boy on the stretcher, torn up like tissue paper. " _I'll tell Mom...something_ ," he calls over the roar of the rotors, shrugging helplessly before waving her off with bloody hands.

This is the first time she's ever been in any kind of aircraft, but MJ doesn't really take the time to appreciate the occasion. She gets placed somewhere out of the way near Peter's head, and puts a timid hand on his shoulder because she can't hold his hand. 

She doesn't cry. Not because she isn't scared shitless and having about a million crises all at the same time. Because she can't, she just can't, Peter is awake and probably has a lot more reason to be scared, and if he sees her crying then it'll just make him more scared, because she's MJ and crying is not something she does unless she's giving up, and she is not going to give up right now.

So she waits, back ramrod straight until the maneuvers of the helicopter make her way, and remains at Peter's side all the way to the Avenger's base upstate. It either takes hours or minutes. The medics don’t wait for her to clamber to the ground before rushing Peter inside to the team of waiting doctors or surgeons or whoever the hell is going to take care of him, she doesn’t know, no one even looked at her. She stands on the helipad for a few minutes, arms wrapped around herself, watching the sky grow dark. Stark really picked a beautiful stretch of land for this place. And to think it could have been used for sustainable low-income housing.

For a time she tries not to think about anything at all. When that obviously doesn’t work she latches onto the fact that _Tony Stark doesn’t own enough land? Needs to take up more precious acres to himself when he could be using his wealth and influence on more worthy causes than registering and tracking superhumans? Please, the Maria Stark Foundation did more good in the few weeks he was missing in Afghanistan then he’s ever done in his life. He creates and he destroys like a child god, blew up over 40 tactical suits without thinking of the debris or pollution they would leave behind, the ethical reuse of the materials, he made Peter’s suit, he made that and it shredded like a cobweb, Dad was able to tear it with his hands, how is that supposed to be safe? How can he say he did Peter a favor giving him the tools that might get him killed? How, how is this happening_?

“They took him into surgery,” a voice says behind her, and every muscle in MJ’s body tenses in reaction. “Exploratory, for the most part, removing all the debris they can and then letting his healing factor take over. It’s less painful than full surgical repairs on people like us.”

Breathing slowly through her nose, MJ turns to look at her favorite superhero. She didn’t even notice until right now that night has been falling around her, and now it’s almost full dark. “It’s never been proven that you have accelerated healing,” she says faintly.

Natasha Romanoff almost cracks a smile. Almost. “Come inside and clean yourself up,” she says. “His aunt should be here any minute and you don’t want to frighten her.”

Frighten-? MJ looks down at herself and sees a dark splatter of blood where Peter’s head had lain on her shorts, feels the hard crust of more dried blood on her cheek and neck. It’s almost enough to make her sick, but she rallies in favor of following the woman into the spacious elevator.

“Wanda might have some clothes you can borrow,” Romanoff continues. Her voice is a lot more soothing than what MJ remembers from the Project Insight trial footage. “You’re taller than the both of us, but too skinny for any of the boys’ clothes. What’s your name?”

“M—” Her voice catches and she has to clear her throat. “Michelle. From school.”

The ghost of a hand touches between her shoulder blades as the elevator bumps to a halt. “Okay, Michelle From School. Come on. We’ll fix you up to wait.”

Re-equipped with a soft set of sweats, her face scrubbed, and a cup of coffee clutched in her hand, MJ thinks that she’s finished brushing elbows with Avengers for the night. She hasn’t considered that this is where they actually _live_ in their downtime, however, and it’s still just. Really weird to think about, but Peter is kind of friends with them. They’re his mentors. She sits with her knees curled to her stomach on an only-slightly-comfortable chair in the corner of a minuscule waiting room. She’s pretty sure Peter is the only Avenger with a living family, so. No need for a big one, apparently.

It’s the yelling down the hall that clues her in to Aunt May’s arrival; MJ looks up just in time to see Tony Stark stumble backward through the door because May just shoved him. Her color is high and there are tear tracks on her face as she backs the most powerful billionaire in the Western world to the nearest wall—uncomfortably close to where MJ is sitting—and slaps him. “ _You said you would keep him safe!”_ May shouts. 

“We have been training him-!” Stark tries to protest, but she just keeps going.

“That’s my boy in there, Stark, not yours! _You don’t get to decide what’s safe enough for him to handle anymore!_ ” 

Then she must catch MJ in her periphery, because she stops, sniffles, and musters a weak and shaking smile. “MJ, hi, I didn’t see you there. Oh, honey, it’s alright now, come here...” And even though the woman barely knows her, she sits in the chair next to MJ’s and wraps her up in a hug. MJ’s pretty sure May needs it more than her, so she doesn’t break away for a minute longer than is socially acceptable for hugging an acquaintance.

She does stare at Tony Stark over May’s shoulder, though, and make him deeply uncomfortable for a few seconds. Disconcerting powerful white men makes her feel steadier.

“The suit I made is— _was_ , dammit—safer than the red-and-blue _pajamas_ he had before I found him,” Stark says softly, “and not having a suit doesn’t historically _discourage_ him. He would have gotten hurt with or without it, only _worse without it_.” His eyes come up from the floor to lock on hers. “I made him as safe as I could.”

For a while he sits in the waiting area with them, but it’s a painfully small room and his discomfort is too loud even when he doesn’t say a word. After about fifteen minutes he takes a deep breath like he’s thinking about saying something, then just walks out.

“Finally,” May mutters while wiping her eyes with a tissue from her purse. “That man does the best with what he’s given, but—well, he either needs a therapist or a fucking kindergarten teacher to go over manners with him again. Sorry, honey.” MJ only shrugs; she doesn’t know if May is apologizing for swearing or for Stark’s behavior, but one isn’t a big deal and the other isn’t her fault, so. She looks at her watch, doesn’t even remember what time it was when Mom went to change Tabby’s diaper on the beach. “Tell me about your date?”

That surprises her into looking up. “Kinda lame, considering how it ended,” she says.

“Before that,” May pushes, then purses her lips tightly. “I just—just in case anything...I want to know he had _fun_.” A few more tears escape from behind her glasses that she hastily wipes away, and she smiles again at MJ. “Did _you_ have fun?”

It's hard to think about when her chest feels like it's about to collapse in on itself with fluttering, frantic anxiety. Whether or not Peter's in safe hands means nothing to her, it's not even the point. The point is that she's had two years to become his friend and waited until six months ago, two years to hang out with that weird, quirky, brave, spectacular boy, watching movies and doing homework and buying each other coffees, laughing at his stupid jokes, watching him go into a quiet secretive superhero anxiety spiral and pull himself together in the span of a few seconds. She’s watched him go from a puny nobody to—well, Peter’s technically still a nobody, even if Spider-Man is famous and beloved. But he’s confident and sweet and weird and doesn’t mind when she takes up their entire lunch period complaining about one shady paragraph in the latest book she’s reading and people like that are the ones who shouldn’t get hurt this bad this often. She’s had two years and wasted them.

“Yeah, it was fun,” she says, because none of the things running through her head will do anything to make May feel better. She remembers something else with a sudden unhappy lurch. “Does Ned-?”

“He’s on vacation with his family,” May replies instantly, reaching up to stroke MJ’s shoulder with restless fingers. It feels nice. “I don't want to call him until we know how Peter’s doing.”

That’s smart. Not only would it be kind of mean to give Ned this kind of news when he’s too far away to do anything about it, but also because he would _not_ be able to keep from blurting out something incriminating in front of his parents and sisters and everyone at the campground too. He means well, but yikes. She leans against May’s shoulder without letting herself think too much about it, because the hand on her back feels really nice, and if Mom can’t be here this is good too. She figures it’s probably comforting for May, too.

It’s not exactly what she would call a nap, because her mind continues whirring at an unsettling pace, reliving every second of what happened in slow-motion and in reverse, replaying it with a better outcome, replaying it with a worse outcome, imagining what it felt like to get hit like that, wondering if Romanoff meant what she thinks she meant about surgery and accelerated healing, supplying her with nightmare images of what could still happen even if the doctors save him now, the ugly red-black of the laser guy’s arm reflected on Peter’s body if they don’t manage to get all the debris out, how much pain he’s going to be in when he wakes up...

So it’s not a nap, so much as a meditation in tragedy with her eyes closed, but she must drift off a little bit regardless, because when May gently squeezes her arm she feels cotton-headed and her mouth is dry. There are footsteps walking away, but when she pries her reluctant eyes open there’s no one in the room with them. 

“He’s fine,” May whispers, and there are fresh tears in her eyes. “The surgeon just left. He’s fine. They took out all the debris and watched to make sure he—make sure his body was healing, and he’s okay.” She looks stunned, turning to MJ with a faintly puzzled line between her brows. “She said the worst had been t-taken out before he even got there, it slowed down the bleeding and kept him alive. MJ...you saved him. You saved my boy.”

There isn’t enough time to find the words, to tell May that it wasn’t her, that she had sat there and panicked and watched Peter die until Dad showed up. But then May is squishing her in the biggest, softest hug, and crying on her a little bit, so she just. She’ll tell her later, and takes her turn to dole out comforting pats.

Only family are allowed to go in and see him first, which totally makes sense but kind of sucks because she’s alone in the waiting area again when the freaking Avengers start filing in to, like, pay their respects or whatever it’s called when you drop in on the friends and relatives of someone who only almost died. She already talked to Stark and Romanoff, so it’s pretty easy to just shrug or nod or whatever. Wanda Maximoff is the prettiest emo adult she’s ever seen, and it’s a little easier to smile at her because she’s so much closer to MJ’s age than the rest of them. But Captain America, official LGBT symbol of punching nazis? He walks over really slowly, hands hanging at his front like if he had a hat he’d be respectfully holding it, and he kneels down next to her so she doesn’t have to crane her neck to look up at him, which—is a strange new thing for her. MJ’s always been tall, and men don’t usually do this type of courteous shit to her, and she isn’t sure she would let anyone else do it besides maybe Peter (maybe).

“Are _you_ okay?” he asks like he means it.

And that’s just. It’s too much. But she doesn’t give in to it, not right now, she can’t. She nods and doesn’t say anything at all, closing her eyes when he squeezes her hand before getting up to leave her alone. She is in a room with a bunch of famous strangers in various states of casual dress, all of them looking at her like she did something special but she didn’t. It wasn’t her. She plays it cool and confident all the time but when a real crisis happened she froze. Maybe Mom’s right and she should go into premed. At least then she’ll be prepared for the next time Peter does something stupidly heroic.

“My dad’s a doctor,” she says to the room at large. “He’s—he’s the one who saved Peter. Not me. I just...got him out of the way so no one else saw his face. Which wouldn’t have mattered if it was just me because he probably would have _died_ if it was just me. So I’ll just...text him that you said thanks, I guess.”

She pulls out her phone to do just that, but her hands are shaking so badly that her grip fails and it clatters to the floor. Mom and Dad have both been texting and calling and she ignored all of them. It takes effort to pick her phone up again. Sending Dad a quick _u basically saved his life nbd. A-Team says thanks. <3_, she goes through the rest of the messages and puts together the story Dad told Mom to cover for Peter. Mom thinks that Peter got hit by falling debris (not technically a lie) and that MJ went with him to a regular hospital to wait with his aunt. Dad was going to pick her up in the morning. Which means Dad will be _here_ in the morning. That’s going to be weird.

It’s another half an hour before May emerges to the shockingly sweet deluge of concern from the world’s mightiest heroes. She smiles and assures them all that Peter’s totally going to be fine, but her eyes scan the room until they land on MJ. “He’s asleep now, sweetie, but you can come back to see him, if you want.”

If a single girl at Midtown High ever says _I wish I could bang Steve Rogers_ ever again, MJ is going to sit her down for a serious talk, because when she gets up too fast after sitting for hours and staggers, she lands directly on that man and holy shit, his muscles are _too much_. He is hard as a mattress case stuffed with bars of soap, it is not comfortable, 0/10 would not recommend. Even if he does catch her and apologize and laugh in a really charming way as he helps her remain steady. She carefully avoids eye contact as she shoulders her way across the crowded little room and follows May back.

It's a pretty short walk through an unobtrusive corridor that looks like it could belong to any hospital, except there are only about ten empty rooms, and they hold much, much higher-tech equipment than Queens General. One of the rooms, she notices, us Hulk-sized. Short as the walk is, though, MJ's heart starts beating faster and faster with every step closer to Peter's they get. She doesn't know why, except that she doesn't know what to expect. The only time someone she loves has been hospitalized is when Tabby was born.

May opens the door and says something something _a minute alone_ , and MJ looks inside and sees Peter lying still and white in an unfamiliar place.

Someone she loves.

The door snicks shut behind her. She takes a step closer to the bed. Peter's mostly pale, but there are red blotches on his face that she isn't sure should be there, around his eyes and nose. He looks...pretty normal, actually. Like he's sleeping. Which he is. Duh, Michelle. There's an IV in the back of his left hand; she shifts trajectory to stand on his right. His hair is filthy and matted down, no shirt on, and if it weren't for the suggestion of bandages creasing the blanket over him he might be at home in his own bed. He's fine. He's really, really fine.

When she takes his hand he breathes in deep, soft and slow. His eyes crack open, find her, and his mouth curls into a faint smile before he goes back to sleep.

"Shit," she whispers to herself, feeling the tears building in her eyes, and she just. 

Gives in.


	7. Chapter 7

When Peter was six, he had to have his appendix removed, because it decided to throw a full-scale rebellion in the middle of his first grade graduation and he puked on the multi-purpose room floor. Even now he doesn't remember it as particularly traumatic, the surgery was already so streamlined he's pretty sure it only took an hour. But surgery is surgery, even with a scope, and he remembers waking up feeling groggy and sick and like someone had just stabbed him. Which. They _had_. But Mom and Dad were there standing over him, fussing over him, giving him hugs and kisses and petting his hair and saying _You're all better now, Peter, they fixed you right up. It's okay, baby, everything's okay._

He almost has his guts ripped apart and burned to cinders when he’s fifteen. He wakes up before May is allowed to come back, and for just a brief second expects to see Mom and Dad standing over him again. Then he goes from _expects_ to _wants_ , and the pain of that feeling is so much worse than the pain of his shredded abdominal muscles. It's choking, it's gripping his heart in its hand, it's disorientating, even after so long. And he's drugged to the gills on superhero-levels of pain medication, so he doesn't exactly have a firm lid on his self control, so by the time May gets there he's just. Bawling. Because he hurts and he was scared and he almost died and he wants his mom and dad to be here to hug and kiss it away, but they can't, they left him, they're gone and never coming back, and sometimes he still feels so lost without them, he—

May fusses over him. She gives him hugs and kisses, and pets his hair, and says _It's okay, Peter, it's okay, I know, I know, I know, I wish they were here too, I love you so much, it's okay, baby, you're okay_. And after a few minutes the world slides back into place. The pain doesn't go away, it never does and never will, but it crawls to the back of his brain where it'll leave him alone for a while. He reaches up to wipe the tears from his face but May already did it for him, so he just hugs her and says a silent thanks that he still has a mom after all.

"You've had everyone worried," May smiles through her tears, speaking softly as she perches on the edge of the bed. "Tony had you choppered in. I—I may have hit him. But I stand by it!"

He's too tired to say anything much, just smiles at her and lets her stroke his hand between her own. His limbs are heavy and full of Jell-O, and he thinks he might have woken up at some point during the surgery, but he’s not. He doesn’t want to think about it too hard right now. He thinks maybe he talks about something, maybe the poop emoji. He wonders if MJ’s pillow got left on the beach, but only to himself. May kisses his cheek and he goes to sleep again.

The next time he wakes up for longer than a second, there’s daylight peeking around the edges of the black-out curtain in his window. His midsection feels itchy and deeply uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt outright. The next thing he notices is that his arm is asleep.

Actually, his MJ is asleep _on_ his arm. There’s a couch in the corner on which his May is also asleep. All of his favorite things asleep in one room, that’s awesome. Except Ned, but that’s okay because he and Peter have sleepovers all the time, so he can probably miss one. This is great. He definitely doesn’t want to wake MJ, but he also realizes that he has to pee, like, _urgently_. What on a normal day would be a smooth effortless maneuver to free his arm is today a jerky and awkward business that makes MJ mumble and pick up her head, sleepily smacking her lips. She is so cute.

“Sorry,” he whispers, “but can you maybe get May? I gotta, uh...”

She wakes up about as easy as pulling teeth, trudging around the bed with a mumbled “shut up,” and helping him to stand while holding his IV pole. 

He still has his boxers on, thank you baby Jesus. Lying still was mildly uncomfortable, but moving and standing and walking is still stiff and painful, and any hope he might have of getting through this with dignity goes out the window. It’s a good thing he’s a little stoned and doesn’t care much. She walks him to the bathroom and waits outside the door with her ears plugged and hums—she is a merciful and benevolent soul—until he washes his hands and pushes it open. 

Then it strikes him that MJ is here again, and he’s just so happy. And, again, a little high. So he hugs her. She smells like Wanda, and that’s pretty weird. She pats his back in a mechanical kind of way and takes him back to bed.

“You remember waking up when I was here earlier?” she whispers as she helps him with his blanket. He groggily shakes his head. “Good. Then I don’t have to kill you.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she assures him, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking down at him. She’s so tall, and he can barely see her in the darkened room, but he’s glad she’s here. “My dad’s gonna be here in an hour to pick me up. He kind of knows your secret identity now, so I guess I have to keep him around. Make sure he doesn’t snitch.”

He’s too tired to worry about that now, but he must make some kind of unhappy face or noise—he’s just really not good at this whole masked vigilante thing, is he?—because she makes that amused _psh!_ noise again. “He mad?” he asks.

“I think more worried,” she admits, taking his hand so perfunctorily in hers that it takes him a few delayed seconds to remember to blush. “You almost died, Peter. That sucks. And, like, you get these expectations in your head of how things are going to be, and then they turn out different and people disappoint you and it’s just, it’s hard, you know?”

He doesn’t know, actually, but her voice is quiet and wobbly when she says it so he’s pretty sure it’s bad. “MJ,” he breathes out, trying to put together a string of thoughts and not doing a great job. “I-I don’t know what to—”

“Because, like,” she interrupts him, and suddenly something about her voice clicks in Peter’s head and he starts to grin before his conscious mind catches up, “I really wanted to do this shitty cliché moment when you woke up, but...your breath smells _so bad?_ Like, so bad I think something died in there? Because the last thing you ate was a chili dog and it’s been like twelve hours, so this is so much less cute than I thought it would be, you’re really letting me down, Parker.”

Then she leans down, and with utmost gentleness, kisses his forehead. A jolt of electricity zaps from the point of contact all the way down to his toes and back up again.

“I can get up and brush my teeth right now,” he offers weakly. His eyelids are already getting heavy again, though, like the top lids are magnetized to the bottoms and resistance is futile. MJ smiles and shakes her head, squeezing his hand.

“Go to sleep, loser. I’ll wake you up before I go.”

Yep. He still likes it when she bosses him around. It feels like he goes to sleep smiling, though he’s sure he starts drooling way sooner. It doesn’t matter as long as she’s holding his hand.

This time he dreams. Peter doesn’t have many pleasant dreams since becoming Spider-Man; usually they’re about everything that’s ever gone wrong on a patrol or every time he ever got hurt or everything that possibly could go wrong in the future. Tonight—technically today—is different, in the way that it’s good. He and MJ are in a big empty warehouse kind of place, with no machinery or garbage or anything inside. She’s holding his hand, which is awesome, but then she steals the web shooter off his wrist and starts doing all these cool acrobatic flips and stuff from the roof beams. He watches for a while, then uses the shooter on his other wrist to join her. 

_I didn’t know you knew how to do this_ , he says.

She smiles at him as she reaches the pinnacle of an upward swing. _I will_ , she replies.

They swing toward one another, he takes hold around her waist, and they spin in a mad vortex of tangled limbs and the smell of jasmine, their connected foreheads the center of gravity. It’s like magic, but better.

He wakes again in a fug of confusion to the homely sounds of doors opening, keys softly chiming, and lowered voices. Prying his eyes open (they are. Extremely crusty), he watches May and Robert hovering near the door, whispering, while MJ roots around behind the bed for something. Probably her phone charger. She’s the smartest person he knows but also has a habit of forgetting her charger everywhere she takes it. 

“I had a dream,” he says as her head pops up at the side of the bed.

“Okay, MLK,” she replies with a mindless pat to his shoulder. “Dad’s here, so I’m out. You gotta pee again?” He nods and she wrestles him out of bed with a lot less gentleness than before. He would complain, but he remembers that there’s a small disposable toothbrush and tube of toothpaste in the bathroom and almost skips there himself, tender abdomen or no. 

He’s so weak he has to pee sitting down, and not for the first time wonders why guys bother standing at all when sitting is an option. Aunt May told him once she catches up on her emails and sometimes reads a few pages of a particularly juicy sci-fi romance while she takes care of business; girls get more time to hang out before it’s weird, that’s. That’s reverse sexism, is what it is. What if he wants to read about time-traveling sexcapades while he pees?

So. Clearly still a little doped up.

As he washes his hands and cleans his teeth with enough toothpaste to make the whole room stink of spearmint, he listens to the comforting rise and fall of the voices in his room. The low rumble of MJ’s dad chuckling. Can they smell his toothpaste? He swallows a little worrying about it, and fumbles to put the toothbrush back in its little plastic wrapper and hide the evidence.

“Peter,” Mister Jones—Robert, sir—says as he shambles back into the big room. There are bags under his eyes to rival MJ’s, like maybe he didn’t sleep much either last night. Peter feels a spike of guilt in his guts for causing everyone so much worry, accompanied by a second, worse spike, for getting yet another civilian involved in his secret identity. But Robert surprises him by patting his shoulder in a kind of fatherly way he remember’s Uncle Ben doing, and smiling weakly. “Good to see you up and about, son.”

“Mister...Robert, sir, are Celine and Tabby okay?” he asks, surprised to find himself choking on tears as the idea of them being anything but okay suddenly occurs to him. But no, he wouldn’t be here with Peter if they weren’t okay. MJ wouldn’t, either. “I’m so sorry, sir, I messed it all up so bad, I-I’m still learning to be good at this, and-and the last thing I ever wanted is to put anyone in danger, MJ knows, I always try my best to do what’s right and-and...”

He thinks that maybe Robert is here to yell at him. To tell him he messed up bad and that he doesn’t want Peter to come anywhere near his family again. Instead he only firms his grip on Peter’s shoulder, and pulls him in for a brief hug. 

“You and I both know once she’s made her mind up there’s no changing it,” he says very quietly into Peter’s ear. “Don’t make me regret saving you.”

“ _Dad_ ,” MJ groans.

“I won’t, sir!” Peter hurries to promise him, wiping his eyes, and grins at MJ over his shoulder. She’s standing just behind her dad with a long-suffering look on her face and May’s arm around her shoulders, but she smiles when he shoots her a thumbs-up. “I always make curfew when I’m on—when I have friends with me. You can ask Aunt May, I am very responsible.”

Pleasantries are exchanged among the adults. Phone calls and coffee are suggested. Celine doesn’t know about Spider-Man’s secret identity and, if Robert has anything to say about it, never will. May agrees that’s for the best. She and Celine have already talked on the phone a few times in the past, apparently, which makes MJ blush like a radio tower as she shuffles from behind her dad to Peter’s side. 

“It’s like they’re arranging a play date,” she confides quietly, putting a perfunctory hand on his elbow to help him back to bed because his legs are shaking with the effort of standing. “So awkward. They know we’re going to have our licenses soon, right?”

“Think May’s in denial of that one,” Peter grins as he nestles down into his pillows. “I’m really good at parallel parking.”

“That a euphemism?”

“ _Gross_.”

They laugh. Her hand finds his among the folds of starched cotton sheets. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. “You brush your teeth yet?” she asks, and he nods so fast it makes his head spin and he has to close his eyes. She _psh!_ es at him. “Good. Keep practicing until our first date and I _might_ let you kiss me, loser. That’s not happening in front of our parents.”

His disappointment is augmented by the reality of how weird it would be to kiss her in front of May, and he nods, feelings his stomach flutter at the promise of getting to kiss MJ sometime in the near future. 

Maybe he should look up the Wiki-How on French kissing, just in case. He’s never done it before. 

“Snapchat me later?” he requests, unable to resist playing with her fingers a little.

She squeezes his hand. “Sure thing. Get me a quote from Captain America for his official stance on the Accords?”

“You bet.” 

They smile at each other. She rolls her eyes as if they’re being so lame, but doesn’t stop smiling even as her dad says it’s time to go. They say goodbye and she kisses him so fast he barely notices until he feels the spot on his forehead burning. Robert smiles and wishes him well again as he puts an arm around MJ’s shoulders, but Peter’s suddenly seized by a memory of the beach and grips the safety rail on the side of his bed and calls out: “Sir!”

Robert slows down and looks over his shoulder at Peter.

“Thanks for saving my life.”

His mouth hardens into a thin line, and Peter thinks that maybe he sees a little bit of residual fear in Robert’s eyes. The thought _My daughter is dating a funeral waiting to happen_ practically scrolls across his eyes like the display on those LED novelty t-shirts.

“Let’s not make a habit of it,” Robert says somberly, and he and MJ vanish around the corner.

The effort of just a few minutes of conversation has him drained and a little sweaty, and he lays back again as May reclaims the chair at his bedside. She helps him take a few sips of water (he thinks there’s maybe some pedialyte mixed into it) and tugs the blankets up under his chin. He looks up at his aunt with what she used to call moon-eyes when he was sick as a kid, and she kisses his dirty hair. “I love you, Peter, but don’t you ever scare me and MJ like that again,” she lovingly says.

He feels himself frown from far away, like the skin belongs to someone else’s face. “MJ wasn’t scared, she was yelling at me,” he recalls blearily.

Sighing, May scoots him over to the edge of the bed and crawls up next to him, just like when he was little and had bad dreams but didn’t want to leave his own room. “The year before you came to live with us, Uncle Ben had bad indigestion and thought he was having a heart attack; I spent the entire ride to the hospital telling him off for every McDonalds burger he’d ever eaten in his life,” she says, and pulls a battered paperback sci-fi romance from her bag on the bedside table. “Go back to sleep if you can, honey. Tony wants to go over what happened with that man as soon as you can stay awake longer than ten minutes.”

That man. The foggy memory of Shooty McLaser’s gangrenous arm, the feverish way he seemed to find Harry Osborn’s face everywhere he looked, his detached rage, they come back to him in flashes that leave him shivering. Aunt May huddles closer to him, and he sneakily curls up against her side like when he was little. Some superhero he is.

“I think he was really sick,” he peeps into the quiet of the dim room.

“I think so too,” May murmurs, stroking his arm. “Someone took a video on their phone. Kudos to the surfer who knocked him out, though. Looked like he was going to hurt as many people as possible to get someone to help him. He’s in custody now, and I’m sure being taken care of. There weren’t any—no one died, Peter. You did good, keeping him distracted, even if I’m not a huge fan of how you did it. You did a good job. I’m really proud of you.”

There’s suddenly a lump in his throat. He takes May’s arm and maneuvers it around his shoulders so he can lay squashed even more firmly against her side. He’s not going to be a kid forever, so he’s going to take advantage of being one as long as he can.

He spends the next two days of his recovery wondering if things are going to be weird and different, now that he and MJ are...whatever they are. He gives Mister Stark a play-by-play If Shooty McLaser’s attack on Luna Park in search of Harry Osborn, he goes on short walks up and down the hall with Steve flanking him to get his strength back, and he eats _like a goatherd_ , according to Wanda, and he’s not exactly sure what that means but he guesses it’s a lot. He calls Ned the second he’s back from his family camping trip to catch him up on everything that happened this week, with some heroic embellishments so he doesn’t look as much like a square as he feels to his best friend. Then it occurs to him that his life is _already_ pretty weird, and having a girlfriend is probably the least weird thing about him.

And it’s not weird at all. He gets home and finds MJ and Ned waiting in his room with a new Lego Millennium Falcon. MJ describes the directions between pages of Between The World And Me, and “hacks” into Peter’s computer to get into her Spotify account and educate them on real music. Ned shows off where he got bitten by like a million leeches going into the lake on a dare from his little sisters. Peter lays down on the floor with his head on MJ’s leg when he gets tired from sitting up, and listens to them argue about male power fantasy fulfillment in video games over his head until May yells that she’s ordering pizza from the other room.

When MJ leaves after dinner, he makes a decision and tries to kiss her; he’s so nervous that he just kind of closes his eyes and goes for it, and is very confused when he encounters her hand and not her face. 

“This wasn’t a date,” she grins. As she turns away, though, he sees her touch the kissed palm to her cheek.

“Then let’s go on one tomorrow!” he yells down the street after her. “I’ll get coffee!” She just waves, laughing at him. “And a— _MJ, stop laughing, I’m serious!_ —and a movie! That counts as a date, right? Text me!”

After she turns the corner, he hears her start to laugh, and it feels like there’s a hot-air balloon slowly expanding in his chest. This moment, these people, this life, it’s his, it’s all his. And he’s never taking it for granted. He’s going to hold on with both hands. He’s going to spend the summer pretending to chase after MJ when he knows she’ll be waiting at the finish line. He’s going to make more time to show Aunt May how special she is, and help Ned’s parents and sisters plan his sweet sixteen. He’s going to fight for these last few years of childhood he has left with the people he loves.

His phone chimes in his back pocket later, while he and Ned are watching Return of the Jedi. It’s a Snapchat from MJ_BushDid911, a close-up snap of her hand with the kissy-face emoji in the palm, captioned _I’m home_. _Catch_.

Grinning to himself like a doofus, he punches the air while Ned isn’t looking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think in the comments below, and feel free to send questions or fic prompts to me on my tumblr (hulksmashmouth)!

**Author's Note:**

> you can reach me with questions and fic prompts on my tumblr page, hulksmashmouth


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